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The death toll in the building collapse in Kartal, Istanbul, has reached 21. It is now major news and politically important, particularly as the President wades in.

It should be.
Turkey’s growth was predicated on fast real estate. Those who had money or contacts could build new buildings and make a killing. This was always so.
But not everyone had that opportunity or that money. They needed to find another way and so often that was about a cut corner here or a bribe there. Often it meant really unsafe housing.
So you ended up with old buildings with odd floor extensions that looked unsafe from the outside but which you hoped were OK. Normally they would be.
An aside: the 1999 earthquake changed a lot in the construction industry and architect friends tell me most buildings are now safe.

Others tell me about doubts regarding the inspection mechanisms and point out clear conflicts of interest. Another thread perhaps at another time.
But this collapse in Kartal was an old story with a new twist. The extra floors were old but without official sign-off. Someone had just done it.

Reports say the building was a beneficiary of the recent Planning Laws Amnesty. An amnesty that makes a lot of money for the state.
In any normal country that building amnesty would be laughed out by everyone. Imagine paying to make what is unsafe safe. Just by virtue of a quick cheque to the state coffers.
But in Turkey this amnesty happened and then a building collapsed.

So when it collapsed and 21 people died, the entire system came under a microscope. Except it didn’t because the news media media ban hit.

So let’s talk about it because that ban is bullshit.
Now I’m not the kind of writer who names names. I don’t not do that because I can’t cite the responsible individuals. It’s about real responsibility.

The names are probably awful people but someone else would have done the same thing.
In Turkey, the individuals who sign off on horrendous negligence are not that important. The system is and has always been broken. But right now Turkey is living the zenith of terrible governance and so it all comes into sharp relief.
The fact is that building would have collapsed with or without that stupid amnesty because the country has been run badly for decades.

But the amnesty will ensure that those collapses will continue for more decades because terrible buildings will now have official documentation.
That the amnesty could even be considered implies the nation is run by amateurs who have no sense of urban planning.

This is a city (Istanbul) that sits on a major fault line. An amnesty of this kind implies a blatant disregard for human safety that borders on the sociopathic.
It has taken 4 days to clear up one building collapse. What might it look like if Istanbul gets hit by the big one?

The President can swear and cuss as much as he likes but this is his system (even if he inherited it). He needs real estate like you need to breathe.
Put simply, this broken system of real estate crony capitalism is what has created the elites that keep the President in power. And this amnesty is a part of that.
So now the President is fighting an election in the midst of this tragedy by attacking real estate malfeasance. It is another surreal moment of political gaslighting.
The collapse in Kartal is perhaps an alllegory for Turkey as a whole. But in my mind it is a harbinger. Something has to change fast for this not to be the future for an entire city and perhaps an entire nation.

That collapse could have happened to all of us.
These were 21 people with dreams, with hopes, with a future. Apparently we can’t debate why that was wiped out.

We should be debating it with furious passion.
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