The Turkish Ministry of Justice announced today, Monday, the arrest of more than 100 construction contractors, as part of investigations into the collapse of buildings as a result of the earthquake, due to non-compliance with building standards.
The authorities estimated the number of buildings that collapsed or were severely damaged after the earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria last Monday at about 25,000 buildings.
The ministry confirmed that it had opened an investigation with the contractors of the new buildings that collapsed as a result of the earthquake, and that it had established offices to investigate earthquake-related crimes, deaths and injuries.
Turkish media said that the public prosecutor in Malatya had issued an order to detain 31 people as part of the investigation into the buildings destroyed by the earthquake.
For his part, Turkish Minister of Justice Bekir Bozdag said that his ministry has established special offices to investigate accusations of fraud in construction work, which may be the cause of the collapse of buildings in the earthquake.
previous arrests
Yesterday, Sunday, the Turkish authorities arrested 33 construction contractors due to construction defects and violations in the city of Diyarbakir.
The largest city in southeastern Turkey affected by the earthquake.
And Anatolia news agency reported that the Diyarbakir Public Prosecutor's Office had begun an investigation regarding identifying defects and irregularities related to construction and buildings destroyed by the earthquake in the city, such as removing concrete columns to increase the area of buildings.
The agency added that investigations are still underway with the detainees, including the contractors responsible for those buildings.
And Turkish media reported the day before yesterday, Saturday, that the authorities had arrested 12 contractors following the collapse of thousands of buildings, 11 of them in Sanliurfa state, and a contractor in Gaziantep state.
On Friday, the police arrested a contractor at Istanbul airport who is responsible for building luxury residential complexes consisting of 12 floors that collapsed in Hatay state as a result of the earthquake last Monday.
The Turkish Ministry of Justice ordered public prosecutors in the ten states to open "offices to investigate crimes related to the earthquake" and to prosecute those responsible for constructing buildings that violated specifications, which caused their collapse.
And at dawn on February 6, an earthquake of 7.7 degrees struck southern Turkey and northern Syria, followed by another hours later with a magnitude of 7.6 and hundreds of violent aftershocks, which caused great loss of life and property in both countries.
Since the earthquake, the Turkish media has denounced some contractors who used poor materials or did not respect safety standards.