President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is facing a growing backlash for overseeing a sweeping 2018 amnesty programme that forgave faults in millions of buildings across Turkey, regularising poor construction practices that were brutally exposed in last week’s earthquake.
Erdoğan’s government approved 7.4mn applications within a year and a half, providing legal status to buildings that had breached a broad set of basic licensing, design and safety rules. The scheme raised TL24bn, at the time about $4.2bn, in building registration fees, according to the environment ministry.
Urban planning specialists said the scheme, a vote-winning measure pushed through before the 2018 presidential election that Erdoğan won, had a scope that was broader than many past amnesties in Turkey, defying warnings about the implications for earthquake resilience.