Human Rights Watch, the Platform for Families in Pursuit of Justice and the Citizens’ Assembly have urged Turkish authorities to reveal the number of public officials and elected municipal leaders under investigation and potentially liable for a role in the collapse of buildings during the 2023 earthquakes that killed more than 53,000 people.
The organizations’ demand for accountability follows a September ruling by an Ankara administrative court that has rejected the government’s attempt to suppress information about investigations into public officials.
“People in Turkey have a right to know how many public officials are under investigation and on trial for the failure to enforce building standards, which resulted in the deaths of thousands,” said Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director of Human Rights Watch. “Withholding information about the extent of efforts to hold municipalities and politicians accountable is tantamount to admitting that they have impunity for their crimes.”
Under Turkish law, public prosecutors are required to get permission from the government before they can investigate public officials and elected municipal authorities. Many private contractors are under investigation for misconduct in connection with the earthquakes, which killed over 53,000 people, but very few public officials have faced investigations.
The Platform for Families in Pursuit of Justice has been able to identify from its own research that permission was granted to investigate 39 public officials but has not been able to discover the full number actually investigated. The investigations requested concern seven collapsed buildings in Osmaniye, Hatay, Kahramanmaraş, Adıyaman and Adana, where a total of 395 people died.
In January, the Citizens’ Assembly and Human Rights Watch filed information requests with the Interior Ministry and local governments across 11 affected provinces. Most agencies either declined to provide information or ignored the requests, citing confidentiality. However, Turkey’s Right to Information Council overruled the Interior Ministry’s decision in March. After the ministry’s appeal was rejected in September, the case moved to a higher court, where a final decision is pending.
Rights groups warn that the lack of transparency mirrors the aftermath of Turkey’s 1999 Marmara earthquake, when inadequate investigations drew international criticism. The European Court of Human Rights later ruled that Turkey violated the right to life by failing to conduct effective inquiries.
“Nothing will bring back our families lost in the February 6 earthquakes, but we demand transparent, independent and impartial investigations,” Zübeyir Boztemir of the Platform for Families in Pursuit of Justice said. “Revealing the number of officials under investigation would be a vital first step.”
The February 6, 2023 earthquakes, with magnitudes of 7.8 and 7.5, struck southern Turkey and northern Syria, leveling entire neighborhoods and leaving millions homeless. Centered near Kahramanmaraş, the twin quakes affected 11 Turkish provinces and parts of Syria, causing one of the region’s worst natural disasters in a century.
In Turkey alone, over 160,000 buildings either collapsed or were severely damaged, sparking outrage over longstanding concerns about lax enforcement of building codes despite the country’s vulnerability to seismic activity.
