Turkey vowed on Sunday to “meticulously” pursue contractors linked to deadly building collapses in last week’s earthquake as rescue workers pulled more bodies from the rubble and anger rose at the swelling death toll.
The 7.8-magnitude quake on Feb. 6 caused widespread destruction in 10 provinces in southern Turkey as well as in northern Syria, and killed more than 33,000 people. More than one million people have been rendered homeless in Turkey, and many others have been left without shelter in Syria.
Amid the destruction, the attention in Turkey has turned to what earthquake victims and building experts have called inferior construction that left people’s homes particularly vulnerable to collapse. The government has started to respond.
Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag told reporters on Sunday that 134 people had been detained and seven others barred from traveling abroad on charges related to collapsed buildings.
“We will follow this up meticulously until the necessary judicial process is concluded, especially for buildings that suffered heavy damage and buildings that caused deaths and injuries,” Vice President Fuat Oktay told reporters in the capital, Ankara.
Two contractors responsible for collapsed buildings in the city of Adiyaman, Yavuz Karakus and Sevilay Karakus, were detained on Sunday at Istanbul Airport, the state-run news media reported. They carried more than $17,000 in cash and were planning to fly to Georgia.
“My conscience is clear,” Mr. Karakus told reporters after his arrest. “I built 44 buildings; only four have collapsed.”
The Turkish Justice Ministry has set up earthquake crimes investigation bureaus in the affected areas, Mr. Oktay said, and prosecutors will be appointed to bring charges against contractors and others connected to poorly constructed buildings that collapsed, often killing their residents instantly and leaving others buried in the ruins in near-freezing temperatures.
Murat Kurum, the environment minister, said that more than 24,000 buildings across the quake zone had been heavily damaged or had collapsed in the quake, based on an assessment of some 170,000 buildings.
The quake destroyed buildings and damaged infrastructure on both sides of the border, but while aid for Turkey has flowed in from around the world, almost none has reached northern Syria because of the complex political situation after more than 12 years of civil war.
The United Nations’ top aid official said on Sunday that aid efforts so far had “failed the people of northwest Syria,” while calling the earthquake the “worst event” in the region in a century.