Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan’s plan to rebuild quickly after devastating earthquakes rocked the country risks courting another disaster unless urban planning and building safety are carefully re-considered, architects and engineers say.
Days after Turkey’s worst earthquake in modern history, Erdogan vowed to rebuild the southern disaster zone within a year, an undertaking conservative estimates put at $US25 billion ($A36 billion) and others expect to be far higher.
Authorities say more than 380,000 units in 105,794 buildings are in urgent need of demolition or have collapsed, out of 2.5 million structures across the region.
A building boom has defined Erdogan’s two-decade rule, during which his government has collected some $US38 billion ($A55 billion) in quake-linked taxes, according to Reuters calculations. The tax, still in place, could provide quick financing to start rebuilding efforts.
Facing elections by June, Erdogan’s government has endured a wave of criticism over both its response to the devastation and what many Turks say were years of policies that led to tens of thousands of buildings being so easily destroyed.
Erdogan had said the government would cover rents of those who leave quake-hit cities. “We will rebuild these buildings within one year and hand them back to citizens,” he said.
But experts believe he needs to carefully enforce seismic-safety standards and build safer structures in the area, which straddles one of three faultlines criss-crossing Turkey.
“It is not only necessary to replace the demolished buildings, but also to re-plan the cities based on scientific data such as not to build on faultlines and to learn lessons from past mistakes,” said Esin Koymen, former head of Istanbul Chamber of Architects.
“The first priority is new planning, not new building.”
The quakes on February 6, which also hit neighbouring Syria, left more than a million homeless and killed far more than the latest official tally of 46,000 people in both countries.
They devastated southern Turkey in the dead of winter, with overnight temperatures near freezing, leaving many emergency tents inadequate for the homeless. More than two million others have evacuated the region that was home to more than 13 million.
The earthquakes revealed the fragility of Turkey’s infrastructure, experts said, given they ravaged both modern and ancient buildings including hospitals, mosques, churches and schools.
Some now worry the government’s ambitious time frame leaves little time to fix past mistakes.
“When they say ‘we start the construction in a month, we finish it in a year’, without the city planning work, frankly, this means that the disaster we are experiencing has not been noticed,” said Nusret Suna, deputy head of the Chamber of Civil Engineers.
“It takes months to make city plans … it is very wrong to ignore those plans.” Urbanisation Minister Murat Kurum said last week the government would consider detailed geological surveys in its city reconstruction plans, and that tenders would be held.
The bill to rebuild houses, transmission lines and infrastructure is around $US25 billion ($A36 billion), or 2.5 per cent of GDP, US bank JPMorgan said in a report. Another report from business association Turkonfed estimated damages to housing at $US70.8 billion ($A102.6 billion).
And analysts say costs could overshoot initial estimates.
Over 20 years in power, Erdogan used major real estate projects to showcase Turkey’s rising prosperity. Public and private builds have boosted jobs and new housing stock, and helped his opinion poll ratings.
The looming presidential and parliamentary elections, which could be delayed due to the quake, pose Erdogan’s biggest political challenge to date given a cost-of-living crisis weighed heavily on Turks well before the disaster struck.
Some critics have said the state exacerbated the crisis by awarding “friendly” companies lucrative construction contracts over the years in return for political and financial support.
The government has vowed to investigate anyone suspected of responsibility for the collapse of buildings, and has arrested dozens of people so far.
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