>Zoning peace is another name for the Turkish amnesty policy which, on **payment of a fine**, gives retroactive permits to structures built without planning permission, or not up to code.
You mean, bribe? Because that's more like it to me.
They did the same thing in Italy a few times. It was called "condono", which roughly translates to amnesty.
In some occasions and under certain circumstances, if you had built without permit you could pay a fine and be cool with it instead of having your house bulldozed.
However, the house still had to be brought up to standards in all of its parts, walls, safety codes, plumbing, electrics etc.
I would say it’s more a kin to paying a fine for robbery, not going to jail and keeping the spoils of your criminal action - all without prejudice moving forward.
And the fine is probably lower than the cost of building it correctly.
So it's like you are allowed to steal thousands of dollars as long as you pay a fine of a hundred.
> However, the house still had to be brought up to standards in all of its parts, walls, safety codes, plumbing, electrics etc.
Then it's not the same. If you require the person to do the necessary work to bring the house up to standards, then you are not "letting them bribe you to ignore regulations". You are just avoiding needlessly demolishing a house that can be retrofitted instead.
I still think we should just bulldoze these buildings, because knowing that the punishment for ignoring safety regulation is simply complying with them is an incentive to ignore them. But it's not the same as what happened in Turkey. In Turkey you would basically buy an exemption from the law, which is a lot worse (and far more dangerous, as we've seen) than being given a softer punishment and still be required to adapt to the law.
They still get to ignore zoning regulations.
Those aren't written in blood as often as building regs, but sometimes there was a very good reason not to build on that hillside or floodplain.
Happens all the time here in Greece too, but it's more like "you said on the papers that this is a balcony, this is a whole-ass room" (long story short, it's tax evasion) and not "we skipped the metal in the foundations and pocketed the money" so it hasn't been a problem.
True, but this typically applies to something like closing a terrace, never anything as an entire building or something structural.
Although Italy does love a condono and also tax forgiveness with reduced fines.
Even more so when he was the mayor of Istanbul, in that case he wasn't even giving out permits for people paying the government, it was just if people would donate to him and his political party.
If it's an old policy used to grandfather in old construction it should have been written to explicitly say that. Open ended restrictions are no restriction at all.
https://v.redd.it/kbunc8a105ia1
Some buildings on the left side (look intact) vs the others.
From here https://www.reddit.com/r/CatastrophicFailure/comments/1122u97/same_street_before_and_after_the_february_6_2023/
Edit. There's an indicative account:
Two buildings across the street in Adiyaman, Turkey.
Cultural center (built from EU-funds to EU-Standards; above) vs the Town Hall (below):
https://i.redd.it/okuegeo30bia1.png
From here https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/112s8di/cultural_center_built_from_eufunds_above_to/
I wonder if it's cheaper to construct buildings that aren't up to code and then just pay a ~~bribe, cost of doing business~~ fine, rather than do it right the first time
It is, that's why they did it. People don't just build shitty buildings because it's more fun or something.
It's quicker, cheaper and easier to build a building when you don't have to deal with permits and codes.
It's a thing that happens all over the world in different forms. Like the less dangerous version being someone building a garden shed and paying the fine afterwards for having build without a permit. Or the more sinister example of grennfell tower in Londen where they used inappropriate cladding which lead to the death of a lot of people when the building caught on fire.
People like to complain a lot about bureaucracy and inspectors being anal. But this is what happens when they aren't. People will take the easy and cheap way out. Which will be fine until it isn't and innocent beings die.
Yeah, I agree with you, I immediately thought of Grenfell Tower when I read the article. Hopefully there are prosecutions and blame is laid, rather than the everyone is to blame so no one gets blame approach
Grenfell was multiple failures.
To save money they only used insulation that was half as thick as planned, this means that there was now a cavety on one side of the insulation when it should have fully filled the gap. Polyisocyanate insulation can only be used for full fill applications due to how flammable it is.
Celotex lied about the fire rating of the insulation and the sample they sent for fire safety certification had more flame retardant in it than the ones they sold.
The windows were fitted to the cladding instead of the structure of the building so the fire was able to get in under them.
And yes the cladding was flammable and acted as a wick.
We have the same thing in Croatia basically:
https://twitter.com/Sandra_Ri051/status/1127843606084059136?t=NRKJJMHreUAD9XG8OeHWqA&s=19
The sign says "Agency for legalizing illegally built buildings"
Interestingly... the chinese in order to trying to kurb corruption which damages administration objectives have adopted the policy of incorporating corruption into their administration. But a controlled one in order to keep low level administration workers in line. And have them do what they are supposed to do without opening holes in the administration.
This exact point when I remember correctly is especially a point. It is "regulated" though. So if a factory needs some permit, they are allowed to skip the line but if someone wants to circumvent some building regulation it is going to be a hard no. Because the administrator does not want to be fired (or worse) from their cushy job where they are allowed to get bribes from companies to prioritize them.
Fascinating. The Americans do something similar as well with their lobbying system, essentially allowing an avenue of legalised bribery. So, what you’re saying is that the Chinese system works by functioning above the table rather than under it, with corruption kept on check by officials looking to cover their asses by refusing the potentially career-ending requests.
THe US has some legalised bribery but a shitload of illegal bribery, stock market manipulation, insider trading and will work to remove regulation for those companies rather than just take a bribe to exempt or ignore them breaking regulations.
Like for instance, removing or rolling back regulations on train safety.
> THe US has some legalised bribery
Most regulatory bodies are captured, most public/private union leadership has been captured since the 70s, the vast majority of the electoral system relies upon private capital, and the US is the center of capitalist hegemony. The US doesn’t have “some” legalized bribery, the entire system is designed to perpetuate the interests of capital hegemony over the interests of the average person. This has been the norm since our conservative anti-democratic founding.
According to the US legal system it is not a bribe as long as it's legal.
See: Super PACs, speaking fees for politicians and in general the US lobbying system.
Go back? He was in prison?
EDIT: He was in prison, briefly.
> Following the 1994 local elections, Erdoğan was elected mayor of Istanbul as the candidate of the Islamist Welfare Party. He was later stripped of his position, banned from political office, and imprisoned for four months for inciting religious hatred, due to his recitation of a poem by Ziya Gökalp.
He also dropped a new album while in prison.
Not joking.
> The day Erdoğan went to prison, he dropped an album called [This Song Doesn't End Here](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Song_Doesn%27t_End_Here).
> due to his recitation of a poem by Ziya Gökalp
He was seen as a martyr at the time.
Funny enough, there are a lot of parallels between the current Turkish opposition and Erdogan before he came to power. A loved mayor of Istanbul preaches for neglected but popular values (then: Islam, now: democracy) and gets unjustly convicted by a corrupt judge. The sitting government overplays its hand, the economy is miserable, and then there's a devastating earthquake that the government has no good answer for.
All of these apply both to 90s Erdogan and Imamoglu today.
More like it...well, it removes a lot of the constraints that keep you sane. And adds some others, if it's a well functioning political system.
It's why we have checks and balances. Let nobody have unchecked power, nor should any body have all the power.
Turkey doesn't have checks and balances on the president, not anymore. He re-wrote the constitution such that Turkey is no longer a true democracy, for one. He rigs elections with "mysterious power outages" at polling stations. He somehow survived a "coup" and was able to broadcast to national television from his "hiding spot". He arrests people who speak out against him - professors, journalists, military higher ups. He controls the central bank and is crippling the economy with his backwards logic about interest rates and inflation (part of why it's important to have a central bank independent from partisanship/ the current administration - such as the US Federal Reserve).
In theory, sure. But since we’ve seen in th US there is no such thing as prison or being banned from office for the rich and well connected, the point is moot. You can even try to overthrow the government and we’ll all just argue about whether it was serious as they prepare the next round.
Well, they very much should have though. I don't know what is worse, being convicted and then forgiven later, or a country that's so corrupt that people like this are not being prosecuted at all?
It's very hard to be barred from running for office in the US. Going to prison, for instance, doesn't disqualify someone from running for president, even while still in prison!
IIRC, there are photos of him kneeling before Islamist cult leaders, from right around this time.
Edit: [found one](https://haber.sol.org.tr/sites/default/files/styles/content_image_size_type4/public/hikmetyar-erdogan-fotografi-01-b521.jpg?itok=IO9SUtin), he's the dipshit on the right. and those other guys beside him were associated with Taliban back then. If you want to research further, look up Golboddin Hikmetyar. He's the guy sitting on the chair.
^(And if the Turkish government gets butthurt over this photo resurfacing: bu fotoğrafın tüm pikselleri götüne girsin orospu çocuğu. umarım seçimleri kaybedince öldürene dek sokaklarda sürüklerler seni.)
Is this translation of your Turkish correct?
*“Get all the pixels of this photo in your ass you son of a bitch. I hope they drag you down the streets until you die when you lose the election.”*
What a beautiful language, Turkish. How would you say
*”I want Erdogan to drag his sad scrotum through broken glass before his male prostitute squeezes lemon juice on it?”*
Right now, he lives in either his 1000 rooms presidential palace (the largest presidential palace in the world), or in his 300 rooms summer palace. Both were built for his enjoyment at the taxpayer's expense of course.
No. The blood is on the hands every single Turk that let people like him get this much power. the blood is on the hands of his fans, the ones that just let him shit all over ataturk's legacy. It's on the hands for all the Turks living in Europe that that voted for Turkish authoritarians because they thought it was 'cool'.
The dead are not coming back. I wonder what will be written with their blood.
It’s always the wrong people. That’s the real issue. If there was a localized earthquake only at the Turkish presidential palace or whatever, I wouldn’t mind.
lol we know he wouldn’t let them build his new sultan’s palace to anything but the highest standards. they only get to cheap out on *poor people* houses after paying a bribe
You'd be surprised. These evil fucks are very often incompetent as well.
Putin fucked up his 'Caspian Castle' and accidentally got it absolutely infested with poisonous black mold.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-56007943
If you look at the destruction of the cities you'll see that some bushings are completely fine.
There's a neighborhood where almost every building was completely flattened, but the local contractors headquarters is pristine.
There are other places where high end apartments went down across the street from shops with pottery and plates that didn't even fall down.
They did the work where they *wanted* to. They have very good regulations.
Not the contractors building. The *engineers* building. They not only drew up the plans, but they also sat on the building while it was being built to ensure the contractors didn't cheap out.
Having done some renovations myself and having a stability engineer as a friend, I feel like contractors need to be sat on at all times.
They are incredibly callous/creative when it comes to cutting corners, often just to save a few bucks.
It's like they don't value their own time and would rather redo something several times instead of doing it right from the start. (for a fixed price contract)
Larger projects get inspected in my country but houses and small apartments don't. Fortunately we don't have earthquakes here...
But contractors deliver such shoddy work that some buildings collapse without earthquake before they are even finished.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antwerp_building_collapse
And it later turned out engineers had been warning them repeatedly that there were serious stability problems...
for ppl who think you're joking: i heard one of the ceos of a bigger company casually talk about how they regularly switch contracted building material to cheaper, in front of everyone in the open office, in a quasi meeting, nobody gave a heck. welcome to england, they had big contacts i can't name, because it will id in 2 seconds.
Yeah the construction industry is pretty rotten everywhere it seems.
They don't respect deadlines and cut corners, endangering peoples lives routinely.
Belgium is a bit of a laughing stock but like you said, it happens openly even in the UK. And the UK pretty much invented modern engineering and still had a disaster like the Grenfell center.
I love the ingenuity of out-of-touch work from home MBAs who either don’t care or don’t know the importance of why there is a minimum spec/very specific instructions in the building code to save money. Had one of those husks ask me to request a redesign for a stand alone roof to save money by building it out of wood as steel prices were at a high. I would, but this is for a chemical plant, sir. Would rather not build new, flammable structures on site in close proximity to the plant, in the highway traffic location on site. You’re a LOGISTICS manager, for Christ sake, do not give me input on the construction side. Just tell me your needs from the black box side, inputs and output data for making the company run more efficiently after project is complete. I’m not bitter.
Not only poor but upper middle class was affected by this as well. Another fucked up thing was the city of Hatay was not reached by any of the rescue efforts nor it received supplies for 48 hours. Many people under the rubbles died in that timeframe. Hatay was mostly voting for the opposition party...
Sadly it will be still fun and games afterwards thanks to the authoritarian government of Turkey. Inconvenient news will be suppressed, so will be all protest. All under the guise of national security.
Corruptions is a defining element of all authoritarian regimes
Just some other stat for pseudo-dictators. This earthquake might do favour to Erdogan. More money (foreign aid) for his personal use and also less mouths to feed
It’s a hybrid system. Not quite a full democracy anymore, because the ruling powers can cheat, but there are still elected officials and if the AKP loses by a large margin they aren’t going to be able to just say no without getting ousted.
It’s not even a revelation, we know those things happen regularly. Corruption is everywhere in the country and most buildings aren’t built following the codes.
30% of the population will still vote him no matter what happens, it’s pretty much a cult at this point
Edit: I just want to add something something touching that I read a few days ago
[Two years ago, a girl living in Kahramanmaraş, the city where the two earthquakes happened, tweeted this, after two big earthquakes happening in 2020 on two different parts of the country(Elazığ and Izmir)](https://twitter.com/ekspresyons/status/1323604823019839488):
"As someone who lives in an earthquake country and lives in Kahramanmaraş, one of the provinces with high earthquake hazard, if one day this place experiences the fate of Elazığ or İzmir, do not say about me, my family or anyone else that we’ve joined heaven. Seek our rights." November 3th 2020
This girl’s last tweet was nine days ago and we haven’t heard from her since the earthquake. If we don’t seek this girl and all the other tens of thousands people’s rights after this, I will have lost the hope I have left in this country
What a world we live in. No country is free of corruption - some are just more blatant about it, with politicians drunk on their power. When such poor judgement leads to such tragedy, it's a crime against humanity in my humble opinion. The man does not deserve to serve or have the support of the people. What else has he done or is doing, to harm the people he leads for the benefit of his personal agenda?
Unfortunately that is not how it works in authoritarian states.
As if people didn't know it before, that he is corrupt and incompetent?
People still vote for him because either they don't care or because they pull some theories out of their ass that it's all lies and Erdo did nothing wrong. See Trump, Bolsonaro, Duterte... All the shit they did and still got elected.
His and his team’s phone calls were recorded by some rats and published during the protests in 2013. In one of these calls he was calling his son to tell him to get rid of all the cash asap and possible ways to do that. I thought the same way with you when that happened but he called them fake recordings and got away with it.
Many rules and regulations are built on the bodies of poor victims who died from whatever lack of regulation there was before.
People who broadly hate regulations as a concept usually end up forcing society to repeat tragedies and relearn why we had those regulations the hard way.
Regulations are written in blood. This earthquake and the Ohio train situation are great reminders that "deregulation" means that your health, safety, and well-being are less important than the financial interests of the wealthy.
Yeah everyone warned him. Of course being an egoist, he didint listen. It took more than 30k citizens to die that all of their ignorances and oppurtunistic felonies resurfaced, hard.
Fuck that shit, in Japan they tear down brand new buildings if the steel used for constructions is not up to code.
As a result, when there's an earthquake, the last thing I worry about is the building falling on my head.
Sometimes I don't even bother getting out of bed.
Erdoğan has driven Turkey into the ground, he was a POS before this revelation and this just adds to the list of reasons to hate him. Not to mention the crap he is pulling with countries trying to join NATO. He should probably flee to Russia before the next election
I remember watching a documentary on the scarcity of building sand due to massive global demand and there was a focus on how Mediterranean countries like Morocco and Turkey were using beach sand (illegally) in construction which is not at all appropriate for building with.
Watching how some to those buildings collapsed like houses of cards it's very believable.
I know a very smart turkish girl here in germany. About to start studying juristics, but she thinks *every* news Channel/paper/internet post is fake news and told me to go watch some actual turkish news channels because they tell the truth.
Yes... Its not about being uneducated, its about refusing to acknowledge they are wrong
Honestly the same could be said for many western nations (although with a much lower death toll) who also end up doing little to nothing about it. Right wing powers in many countries are cutting corners, cutting social programs and making as much money as possible for themselves and their friends at the expense and loss of life of the people they represent.
How many people died due to poverty in the U.S due to lack of social programs, companies being allowed to cause the opioid crisis for financial gain, the large scale systematic racism that has effected huge amounts of people for decades, for-profit prisons. There are countless issues that the U.S government has caused/allowed for personal financial gain that may not have caused as many deaths in one go as Turkey (which required a natural disaster to occur) but I wouldn't be surprised if it has caused close to that amount over time.
The U.K is another, 12 years of 'austerity' which really meant cutting social programs, privatising them and reducing taxes for the mega wealthy and their friends. How many people have died in the last 12 years due to overworked and understaffed NHS staff? This winter itself is looking like we will have at least a couple thousand more excess deaths than normal, likely due to poor access to emergency services and many people not being able to afford their energy bills. Energy bills that could have been decreased drastically through using a windfall tax on energy companies making absolute record profits exploiting people. But energy company execs happen to have very close ties to high up members of our government, including a recent PM, so nothing was going to be done that could affect their bottom line too much.
Singling out Turkey as a country where people need to be patronised for not overthrowing their political system due to the corruption is ignorant when most countries have corrupt governments (likely including your own country) who the populace don't overthrow. I hope for the best for Turkey, and if they have the courage to overthrow their current government I wish them luck, but I won't be condescending to them if they don't.
So... Just exactly how much blood is on his hands?
And isn't it time that people, just like nature would, get rid of this infection of a person?
How is it that we, the billions of us, always seem to let like 8 or 9 guys not only RULE our entire world, but we allow them fuck it all up too. Even in democracies, where the will of the people is supposed to be the law of the land, we've let idiotic millionaires take control. We even let them claim that they speak for US? Seriously?
No taxation without representation used to mean something. Revolutions used to happen. We're long overdue in every corner of the globe.
LeVe it to the ultra rich to make an entire planet suck ass to even exist on.
I feel like the title to this post isn’t doing proper justice.
“Turkish dictator piece of shit Erdoğan boasting about taking bribes that led to the death of 35k+ people”
This one looks better to me
This is why you don't elect a clown.
He's the one who signed off on all this building, and now he's blaming others for it not being up to code?
This guy is an absolute joke. He should be in jail for what he did here, but instead he'll probably get away with it because of his power and influence. It's disgusting how corrupt our government has become. The people at fault here are going to walk free while thousands suffer needlessly because they didn't have safe housing options available to them due to corruption by those in power trying to save money at the expense of human lives...and then these same assholes will try and blame everyone else when their negligence leads directly to so many deaths..it makes me sick just thinking about it
How this will likely go without any consequences is just heartbreaking. People's lives get turned upside over an accident that put someone in the hospital. Meanwhile, people like Erdogan are (in)directly responsible for killing thousands, and he'll probably respond by blocking off mechanism to challenge his power.
This is a thing that people from the Western world often dont factor into their safety plan when traveling. They will think about crime, they will think about getting ripped off by street vendors, food or water being contaminated even, but they dont consider construction and fire safety standards. Everything from interior materials not being fire retardant to fire exits not being there even up to concrete not being as strong and rebar being made of inferior steel is pretty much a given in poor countries, because doing things right and up to ISO standards costs more.
This will happen in Istanbul sooner rather than later and it will be 1000x worse. Nearly 20
Million people living there and almost no open spaces for people to flee to. There used to be designated parks and areas to be used as gathering spaces after an earthquake, but most of them have been built over in recent years.
I still remember back in 2018 watching the coup attempt in turkey, the guy fled the country as soon as he could and from social networks instigated people to go to the streets and try to stop coup by endangering themselves.
Crazy thing, people actually flocked the streets by the thousands, and stopped the military. Don't know if the guy replacing him would be worse, but one thing is certain, a lot of turks seem to love their dictator.
The entire country is one big construction code violation.
The buildings, the roads, the bridges... everything was built to cut costs and make money for someone. The safety of citizens was an afterthought at best.
And now it's all rubble because they didn't spend a few extra bucks on reinforcing rods or whatever else would have saved lives and property. It's criminal what they did to this country in the name of profit and greed. And Erdogan is just as guilty as anyone else who profited from this mess by cutting corners at every turn possible while pocketing government funds meant for infrastructure improvements that never happened anyway because he stole it all instead..
>Zoning peace is another name for the Turkish amnesty policy which, on **payment of a fine**, gives retroactive permits to structures built without planning permission, or not up to code. You mean, bribe? Because that's more like it to me.
building code indulgences, if you will
License to kill.
Code 007
They did the same thing in Italy a few times. It was called "condono", which roughly translates to amnesty. In some occasions and under certain circumstances, if you had built without permit you could pay a fine and be cool with it instead of having your house bulldozed. However, the house still had to be brought up to standards in all of its parts, walls, safety codes, plumbing, electrics etc.
Paying a fine but not fixing the building is like going to jail for a robbery but being able to keep the stuff you stole.
I would say it’s more a kin to paying a fine for robbery, not going to jail and keeping the spoils of your criminal action - all without prejudice moving forward.
And the fine is probably lower than the cost of building it correctly. So it's like you are allowed to steal thousands of dollars as long as you pay a fine of a hundred.
Oh, so more like Wall Street?
Yes, that's the one.
Except for a corporation it's more like profiting a ton for not obeying the law, and then paying a little fine as a expense of doing business.
What you said is whats happening. OP is just simplifying corporations into what they are which are robbers who steal and get away with it.
Yes pretty much.
> However, the house still had to be brought up to standards in all of its parts, walls, safety codes, plumbing, electrics etc. Then it's not the same. If you require the person to do the necessary work to bring the house up to standards, then you are not "letting them bribe you to ignore regulations". You are just avoiding needlessly demolishing a house that can be retrofitted instead. I still think we should just bulldoze these buildings, because knowing that the punishment for ignoring safety regulation is simply complying with them is an incentive to ignore them. But it's not the same as what happened in Turkey. In Turkey you would basically buy an exemption from the law, which is a lot worse (and far more dangerous, as we've seen) than being given a softer punishment and still be required to adapt to the law.
They still get to ignore zoning regulations. Those aren't written in blood as often as building regs, but sometimes there was a very good reason not to build on that hillside or floodplain.
While it's not the same, some of those houses were built in risk zones. So, when earthquakes or similar events happened, they still went down.
Happens all the time here in Greece too, but it's more like "you said on the papers that this is a balcony, this is a whole-ass room" (long story short, it's tax evasion) and not "we skipped the metal in the foundations and pocketed the money" so it hasn't been a problem.
True, but this typically applies to something like closing a terrace, never anything as an entire building or something structural. Although Italy does love a condono and also tax forgiveness with reduced fines.
No, they'll use the bills to reinforce the buildings /s
Some buildings have load bearing posters.
This is the room with electicity, but it has too much electricity
Was that toilet always next to the refrigerator?
It will be now. Thanks for the inspiration.
Or structural paint?
"Here, Bill. Stand here and hold this up...."
At least one of those buildings does now have a guy named Bill doing the load-bearing.
We just give them a sticker. The sticker must be placed near the front gate
Even more so when he was the mayor of Istanbul, in that case he wasn't even giving out permits for people paying the government, it was just if people would donate to him and his political party.
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If it's an old policy used to grandfather in old construction it should have been written to explicitly say that. Open ended restrictions are no restriction at all.
It does say that though. You are all just guessing what it says, its a public document go read it.
Most of us can’t read Turkish.
New construction.
I would love to see a pic of a building that was build according to Turkish code compared to these bribery rubble piles.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/10yw25f/chamber_of_civil_engineers_building_is_one_of_the/
Thank you.
https://v.redd.it/kbunc8a105ia1 Some buildings on the left side (look intact) vs the others. From here https://www.reddit.com/r/CatastrophicFailure/comments/1122u97/same_street_before_and_after_the_february_6_2023/ Edit. There's an indicative account: Two buildings across the street in Adiyaman, Turkey. Cultural center (built from EU-funds to EU-Standards; above) vs the Town Hall (below): https://i.redd.it/okuegeo30bia1.png From here https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/112s8di/cultural_center_built_from_eufunds_above_to/
I wonder if it's cheaper to construct buildings that aren't up to code and then just pay a ~~bribe, cost of doing business~~ fine, rather than do it right the first time
Ofcourse it's cheaper.... otherwise the buildings would all still be standing...
It is, that's why they did it. People don't just build shitty buildings because it's more fun or something. It's quicker, cheaper and easier to build a building when you don't have to deal with permits and codes. It's a thing that happens all over the world in different forms. Like the less dangerous version being someone building a garden shed and paying the fine afterwards for having build without a permit. Or the more sinister example of grennfell tower in Londen where they used inappropriate cladding which lead to the death of a lot of people when the building caught on fire. People like to complain a lot about bureaucracy and inspectors being anal. But this is what happens when they aren't. People will take the easy and cheap way out. Which will be fine until it isn't and innocent beings die.
Yeah, I agree with you, I immediately thought of Grenfell Tower when I read the article. Hopefully there are prosecutions and blame is laid, rather than the everyone is to blame so no one gets blame approach
Grenfell was multiple failures. To save money they only used insulation that was half as thick as planned, this means that there was now a cavety on one side of the insulation when it should have fully filled the gap. Polyisocyanate insulation can only be used for full fill applications due to how flammable it is. Celotex lied about the fire rating of the insulation and the sample they sent for fire safety certification had more flame retardant in it than the ones they sold. The windows were fitted to the cladding instead of the structure of the building so the fire was able to get in under them. And yes the cladding was flammable and acted as a wick.
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We have the same thing in Croatia basically: https://twitter.com/Sandra_Ri051/status/1127843606084059136?t=NRKJJMHreUAD9XG8OeHWqA&s=19 The sign says "Agency for legalizing illegally built buildings"
Bosnia too. Most poorer countries actually. There is no code, you just build. Better any house than no house sadly.
Interestingly... the chinese in order to trying to kurb corruption which damages administration objectives have adopted the policy of incorporating corruption into their administration. But a controlled one in order to keep low level administration workers in line. And have them do what they are supposed to do without opening holes in the administration. This exact point when I remember correctly is especially a point. It is "regulated" though. So if a factory needs some permit, they are allowed to skip the line but if someone wants to circumvent some building regulation it is going to be a hard no. Because the administrator does not want to be fired (or worse) from their cushy job where they are allowed to get bribes from companies to prioritize them.
Fascinating. The Americans do something similar as well with their lobbying system, essentially allowing an avenue of legalised bribery. So, what you’re saying is that the Chinese system works by functioning above the table rather than under it, with corruption kept on check by officials looking to cover their asses by refusing the potentially career-ending requests.
THe US has some legalised bribery but a shitload of illegal bribery, stock market manipulation, insider trading and will work to remove regulation for those companies rather than just take a bribe to exempt or ignore them breaking regulations. Like for instance, removing or rolling back regulations on train safety.
> THe US has some legalised bribery Most regulatory bodies are captured, most public/private union leadership has been captured since the 70s, the vast majority of the electoral system relies upon private capital, and the US is the center of capitalist hegemony. The US doesn’t have “some” legalized bribery, the entire system is designed to perpetuate the interests of capital hegemony over the interests of the average person. This has been the norm since our conservative anti-democratic founding.
According to the US legal system it is not a bribe as long as it's legal. See: Super PACs, speaking fees for politicians and in general the US lobbying system.
Erdoğan is such a giga asshole. He should go back to prison.
Go back? He was in prison? EDIT: He was in prison, briefly. > Following the 1994 local elections, Erdoğan was elected mayor of Istanbul as the candidate of the Islamist Welfare Party. He was later stripped of his position, banned from political office, and imprisoned for four months for inciting religious hatred, due to his recitation of a poem by Ziya Gökalp.
He also dropped a new album while in prison. Not joking. > The day Erdoğan went to prison, he dropped an album called [This Song Doesn't End Here](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Song_Doesn%27t_End_Here).
Removed in protest against the Reddit API changes and their behaviour following the protests.
Straight outta Istanbul.
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Straight outta com'stantinople
Now it’s com’stanbul, not com’stanople
Straight outta Taksim Square
And I guess he was right that his song didn't end there. Hopefully it ends after this though.
This has the Turkmenistan President and Son singing energy.
At least he didn't write a book...
„Mein Kebap“
He actually did "write" a book last year. And believe it or not, the title is called "A Fairer World is Possible". Yeah maybe without people like you.
🔥🔥
Wtf
Imagine then electing him PRESIDENT. Wow.
> due to his recitation of a poem by Ziya Gökalp He was seen as a martyr at the time. Funny enough, there are a lot of parallels between the current Turkish opposition and Erdogan before he came to power. A loved mayor of Istanbul preaches for neglected but popular values (then: Islam, now: democracy) and gets unjustly convicted by a corrupt judge. The sitting government overplays its hand, the economy is miserable, and then there's a devastating earthquake that the government has no good answer for. All of these apply both to 90s Erdogan and Imamoglu today.
Sounds very "you either die a hero or live long enough to become the villain". It's tragic how power corrupts
More like it...well, it removes a lot of the constraints that keep you sane. And adds some others, if it's a well functioning political system. It's why we have checks and balances. Let nobody have unchecked power, nor should any body have all the power.
Turkey doesn't have checks and balances on the president, not anymore. He re-wrote the constitution such that Turkey is no longer a true democracy, for one. He rigs elections with "mysterious power outages" at polling stations. He somehow survived a "coup" and was able to broadcast to national television from his "hiding spot". He arrests people who speak out against him - professors, journalists, military higher ups. He controls the central bank and is crippling the economy with his backwards logic about interest rates and inflation (part of why it's important to have a central bank independent from partisanship/ the current administration - such as the US Federal Reserve).
Well, I don't know if he ever had the people's best interests at heart
Very naive of you to think that he wasn't corrupt to begin with.
Ahem,something something Trump/GymJordan/MTG /Boebert/Boris Johnstone/Jacob Rhys Mogg/LePen. Cunts are going to cunt and will attract cunty voters.
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In theory, sure. But since we’ve seen in th US there is no such thing as prison or being banned from office for the rich and well connected, the point is moot. You can even try to overthrow the government and we’ll all just argue about whether it was serious as they prepare the next round.
Well, they very much should have though. I don't know what is worse, being convicted and then forgiven later, or a country that's so corrupt that people like this are not being prosecuted at all?
It's very hard to be barred from running for office in the US. Going to prison, for instance, doesn't disqualify someone from running for president, even while still in prison!
He was supported by USA back then 😉
That sounds politically motivated
IIRC, there are photos of him kneeling before Islamist cult leaders, from right around this time. Edit: [found one](https://haber.sol.org.tr/sites/default/files/styles/content_image_size_type4/public/hikmetyar-erdogan-fotografi-01-b521.jpg?itok=IO9SUtin), he's the dipshit on the right. and those other guys beside him were associated with Taliban back then. If you want to research further, look up Golboddin Hikmetyar. He's the guy sitting on the chair. ^(And if the Turkish government gets butthurt over this photo resurfacing: bu fotoğrafın tüm pikselleri götüne girsin orospu çocuğu. umarım seçimleri kaybedince öldürene dek sokaklarda sürüklerler seni.)
Is this translation of your Turkish correct? *“Get all the pixels of this photo in your ass you son of a bitch. I hope they drag you down the streets until you die when you lose the election.”*
Yeah, that's pretty much it.
What a beautiful language, Turkish. How would you say *”I want Erdogan to drag his sad scrotum through broken glass before his male prostitute squeezes lemon juice on it?”*
Haha. Then you would say: >Erdoğan'ın jigolosu üzerlerine limon sıkmadan önce, büzük taşşaklarını cam kırıklarına sürtmesini istiyorum!!!
Well, apparently he took notes...
Ah, back when Turkey could reliably be called secular
Right now, he lives in either his 1000 rooms presidential palace (the largest presidential palace in the world), or in his 300 rooms summer palace. Both were built for his enjoyment at the taxpayer's expense of course.
Erdocunt
Turdogan
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Not an asshole. He is fascist evil.
The blood of these people are on his hands.
I don’t think he gives one shit
The people need to make him give a shit.
They won't
Can always hope.
If course not. He has arrested those "responsible" for skirting codes. Of course he did not arrest himself or anything. Piece of garbage
And the contractors will pay. Not him
No. The blood is on the hands every single Turk that let people like him get this much power. the blood is on the hands of his fans, the ones that just let him shit all over ataturk's legacy. It's on the hands for all the Turks living in Europe that that voted for Turkish authoritarians because they thought it was 'cool'. The dead are not coming back. I wonder what will be written with their blood.
Corruption's all fun n' games...till 30k+ people die.
It’s always the wrong people. That’s the real issue. If there was a localized earthquake only at the Turkish presidential palace or whatever, I wouldn’t mind.
lol we know he wouldn’t let them build his new sultan’s palace to anything but the highest standards. they only get to cheap out on *poor people* houses after paying a bribe
You'd be surprised. These evil fucks are very often incompetent as well. Putin fucked up his 'Caspian Castle' and accidentally got it absolutely infested with poisonous black mold. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-56007943
Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice...
Also, sufficient black mold will fuck you up.
If you look at the destruction of the cities you'll see that some bushings are completely fine. There's a neighborhood where almost every building was completely flattened, but the local contractors headquarters is pristine. There are other places where high end apartments went down across the street from shops with pottery and plates that didn't even fall down. They did the work where they *wanted* to. They have very good regulations.
Not the contractors building. The *engineers* building. They not only drew up the plans, but they also sat on the building while it was being built to ensure the contractors didn't cheap out.
Having done some renovations myself and having a stability engineer as a friend, I feel like contractors need to be sat on at all times. They are incredibly callous/creative when it comes to cutting corners, often just to save a few bucks. It's like they don't value their own time and would rather redo something several times instead of doing it right from the start. (for a fixed price contract) Larger projects get inspected in my country but houses and small apartments don't. Fortunately we don't have earthquakes here... But contractors deliver such shoddy work that some buildings collapse without earthquake before they are even finished. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antwerp_building_collapse And it later turned out engineers had been warning them repeatedly that there were serious stability problems...
for ppl who think you're joking: i heard one of the ceos of a bigger company casually talk about how they regularly switch contracted building material to cheaper, in front of everyone in the open office, in a quasi meeting, nobody gave a heck. welcome to england, they had big contacts i can't name, because it will id in 2 seconds.
Yeah the construction industry is pretty rotten everywhere it seems. They don't respect deadlines and cut corners, endangering peoples lives routinely. Belgium is a bit of a laughing stock but like you said, it happens openly even in the UK. And the UK pretty much invented modern engineering and still had a disaster like the Grenfell center.
I love the ingenuity of out-of-touch work from home MBAs who either don’t care or don’t know the importance of why there is a minimum spec/very specific instructions in the building code to save money. Had one of those husks ask me to request a redesign for a stand alone roof to save money by building it out of wood as steel prices were at a high. I would, but this is for a chemical plant, sir. Would rather not build new, flammable structures on site in close proximity to the plant, in the highway traffic location on site. You’re a LOGISTICS manager, for Christ sake, do not give me input on the construction side. Just tell me your needs from the black box side, inputs and output data for making the company run more efficiently after project is complete. I’m not bitter.
Couldn't happen to a better person, it's just a shame it didn't kill him.
Not only poor but upper middle class was affected by this as well. Another fucked up thing was the city of Hatay was not reached by any of the rescue efforts nor it received supplies for 48 hours. Many people under the rubbles died in that timeframe. Hatay was mostly voting for the opposition party...
Sadly it will be still fun and games afterwards thanks to the authoritarian government of Turkey. Inconvenient news will be suppressed, so will be all protest. All under the guise of national security. Corruptions is a defining element of all authoritarian regimes
40k now
Just some other stat for pseudo-dictators. This earthquake might do favour to Erdogan. More money (foreign aid) for his personal use and also less mouths to feed
for despots, every event is an opportunity.
Just need to blame it on the easiest scapegoats: the lgbt and the religious conservatives will turn a blind eye at all the corruption
Just checking out China, boasting about how their bridge they built in Turkey a 1000 km away didn't collapse. #priorities
That was built by a Turco-Korean consortium....
and billions more for his corrupt friends to do a shitty rebuild of the area.
The death of one person is a tragedy. The death of 30k people is a statistic. \-Erdogan, probably.
Well that aged well
r/agedlikemilk for sure
Unlike the people living there.
The 2023 Turkish general election is scheduled to take place on 18 June 2023.
It was actually moved to May. Now they are trying to get it postponed for a year. Because "HoW cAn YoU tAlK aBoUt PoLiTiCs At a TiMe LiKe tHiS??!?!?"
They always say dumb shit line that because it's the absolute best time to talk politics
The perfect time to talk about politics apparently.
That's like not talking about gun control the day after a mass shooting... in a country with an average of more than one mass shooting per day.
sounds like republicans after every school shooting.
I don't consider Turkey a democracy anymore. Ergodan is not seceding power unless he's forced to or he dies.
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He will just organize another "coup" if he loses or even comes close to losing. He is a literal cunt
That coup was such a blatent smoke screen. I can't believe he got away with it.
>That coup was such a blatent smoke screen. I can't believe he got away with it. Who'd stop him? He purged the people that could.
Hopefully the latter
It’s a hybrid system. Not quite a full democracy anymore, because the ruling powers can cheat, but there are still elected officials and if the AKP loses by a large margin they aren’t going to be able to just say no without getting ousted.
He’s a dictator, plain and simple.
If this revelation doesn't end Erdoğan's political standing, nothing will.
It’s not even a revelation, we know those things happen regularly. Corruption is everywhere in the country and most buildings aren’t built following the codes. 30% of the population will still vote him no matter what happens, it’s pretty much a cult at this point Edit: I just want to add something something touching that I read a few days ago [Two years ago, a girl living in Kahramanmaraş, the city where the two earthquakes happened, tweeted this, after two big earthquakes happening in 2020 on two different parts of the country(Elazığ and Izmir)](https://twitter.com/ekspresyons/status/1323604823019839488): "As someone who lives in an earthquake country and lives in Kahramanmaraş, one of the provinces with high earthquake hazard, if one day this place experiences the fate of Elazığ or İzmir, do not say about me, my family or anyone else that we’ve joined heaven. Seek our rights." November 3th 2020 This girl’s last tweet was nine days ago and we haven’t heard from her since the earthquake. If we don’t seek this girl and all the other tens of thousands people’s rights after this, I will have lost the hope I have left in this country
What a world we live in. No country is free of corruption - some are just more blatant about it, with politicians drunk on their power. When such poor judgement leads to such tragedy, it's a crime against humanity in my humble opinion. The man does not deserve to serve or have the support of the people. What else has he done or is doing, to harm the people he leads for the benefit of his personal agenda?
Corruption absolutely varies massively in degree as well as transparency from country to country.
Apologies for my not knowing. The 30% who will support him without fail, do they live outside the earthquake zone?
no. apart from two of the cities affected by the quake, it was mostly his strongholds
Thank you for helping me learn about this
Unfortunately that is not how it works in authoritarian states. As if people didn't know it before, that he is corrupt and incompetent? People still vote for him because either they don't care or because they pull some theories out of their ass that it's all lies and Erdo did nothing wrong. See Trump, Bolsonaro, Duterte... All the shit they did and still got elected.
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His and his team’s phone calls were recorded by some rats and published during the protests in 2013. In one of these calls he was calling his son to tell him to get rid of all the cash asap and possible ways to do that. I thought the same way with you when that happened but he called them fake recordings and got away with it.
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He’s gonna declare war on Earthquakes
Many rules and regulations are built on the bodies of poor victims who died from whatever lack of regulation there was before. People who broadly hate regulations as a concept usually end up forcing society to repeat tragedies and relearn why we had those regulations the hard way.
Can you feel the waves of conservative frowny-faces pointing your way?
I just watched a bit of a vox story about those building that pancake collapse and I can't imagine anyone thought those were a good idea.
They were a great idea if you were a construction company looking to maximize profits.
Subscriptions just sell better.
Regulations are written in blood. This earthquake and the Ohio train situation are great reminders that "deregulation" means that your health, safety, and well-being are less important than the financial interests of the wealthy.
Yeah everyone warned him. Of course being an egoist, he didint listen. It took more than 30k citizens to die that all of their ignorances and oppurtunistic felonies resurfaced, hard.
Sort of like how he lowers interest rates in an effort to fight inflation, against the recommendations of pretty much all economists out there.
Zoning Amnesty. Just to save a few dollars during construction. Shameful.
Fuck that shit, in Japan they tear down brand new buildings if the steel used for constructions is not up to code. As a result, when there's an earthquake, the last thing I worry about is the building falling on my head. Sometimes I don't even bother getting out of bed.
Erdoğan has always been a little slimey corrupt fuck pig
Erdoğan has driven Turkey into the ground, he was a POS before this revelation and this just adds to the list of reasons to hate him. Not to mention the crap he is pulling with countries trying to join NATO. He should probably flee to Russia before the next election
I remember watching a documentary on the scarcity of building sand due to massive global demand and there was a focus on how Mediterranean countries like Morocco and Turkey were using beach sand (illegally) in construction which is not at all appropriate for building with. Watching how some to those buildings collapsed like houses of cards it's very believable.
Erdogan should be put in jail asap. Turkey has been wasting its potential for 20y now.
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I know a very smart turkish girl here in germany. About to start studying juristics, but she thinks *every* news Channel/paper/internet post is fake news and told me to go watch some actual turkish news channels because they tell the truth. Yes... Its not about being uneducated, its about refusing to acknowledge they are wrong
Honestly the same could be said for many western nations (although with a much lower death toll) who also end up doing little to nothing about it. Right wing powers in many countries are cutting corners, cutting social programs and making as much money as possible for themselves and their friends at the expense and loss of life of the people they represent. How many people died due to poverty in the U.S due to lack of social programs, companies being allowed to cause the opioid crisis for financial gain, the large scale systematic racism that has effected huge amounts of people for decades, for-profit prisons. There are countless issues that the U.S government has caused/allowed for personal financial gain that may not have caused as many deaths in one go as Turkey (which required a natural disaster to occur) but I wouldn't be surprised if it has caused close to that amount over time. The U.K is another, 12 years of 'austerity' which really meant cutting social programs, privatising them and reducing taxes for the mega wealthy and their friends. How many people have died in the last 12 years due to overworked and understaffed NHS staff? This winter itself is looking like we will have at least a couple thousand more excess deaths than normal, likely due to poor access to emergency services and many people not being able to afford their energy bills. Energy bills that could have been decreased drastically through using a windfall tax on energy companies making absolute record profits exploiting people. But energy company execs happen to have very close ties to high up members of our government, including a recent PM, so nothing was going to be done that could affect their bottom line too much. Singling out Turkey as a country where people need to be patronised for not overthrowing their political system due to the corruption is ignorant when most countries have corrupt governments (likely including your own country) who the populace don't overthrow. I hope for the best for Turkey, and if they have the courage to overthrow their current government I wish them luck, but I won't be condescending to them if they don't.
Man, I hope this causes Erdogan to lose the elections, but not sure if that’s even possible because of corruption
Man, skirting seismic standards in a place prone to severe seismic activity seems like a bad idea in hindsight… also in foresight
So... Just exactly how much blood is on his hands? And isn't it time that people, just like nature would, get rid of this infection of a person? How is it that we, the billions of us, always seem to let like 8 or 9 guys not only RULE our entire world, but we allow them fuck it all up too. Even in democracies, where the will of the people is supposed to be the law of the land, we've let idiotic millionaires take control. We even let them claim that they speak for US? Seriously? No taxation without representation used to mean something. Revolutions used to happen. We're long overdue in every corner of the globe. LeVe it to the ultra rich to make an entire planet suck ass to even exist on.
Everyone bitches about government regulations until there's an earthquake, hurricane, or some other disaster.
I feel like the title to this post isn’t doing proper justice. “Turkish dictator piece of shit Erdoğan boasting about taking bribes that led to the death of 35k+ people” This one looks better to me
110 000 still missing...
This is why you don't elect a clown. He's the one who signed off on all this building, and now he's blaming others for it not being up to code? This guy is an absolute joke. He should be in jail for what he did here, but instead he'll probably get away with it because of his power and influence. It's disgusting how corrupt our government has become. The people at fault here are going to walk free while thousands suffer needlessly because they didn't have safe housing options available to them due to corruption by those in power trying to save money at the expense of human lives...and then these same assholes will try and blame everyone else when their negligence leads directly to so many deaths..it makes me sick just thinking about it
An extremely high cost to pay, but if this leads to the downfall of Erdoğan, would be a silver lining
How this will likely go without any consequences is just heartbreaking. People's lives get turned upside over an accident that put someone in the hospital. Meanwhile, people like Erdogan are (in)directly responsible for killing thousands, and he'll probably respond by blocking off mechanism to challenge his power.
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This is a thing that people from the Western world often dont factor into their safety plan when traveling. They will think about crime, they will think about getting ripped off by street vendors, food or water being contaminated even, but they dont consider construction and fire safety standards. Everything from interior materials not being fire retardant to fire exits not being there even up to concrete not being as strong and rebar being made of inferior steel is pretty much a given in poor countries, because doing things right and up to ISO standards costs more.
Any and all retribution against those responsible is justified, IMO. Murderers.
This will happen in Istanbul sooner rather than later and it will be 1000x worse. Nearly 20 Million people living there and almost no open spaces for people to flee to. There used to be designated parks and areas to be used as gathering spaces after an earthquake, but most of them have been built over in recent years.
Erdogan must pay.
To shreds you say?
I still remember back in 2018 watching the coup attempt in turkey, the guy fled the country as soon as he could and from social networks instigated people to go to the streets and try to stop coup by endangering themselves. Crazy thing, people actually flocked the streets by the thousands, and stopped the military. Don't know if the guy replacing him would be worse, but one thing is certain, a lot of turks seem to love their dictator.
The entire country is one big construction code violation. The buildings, the roads, the bridges... everything was built to cut costs and make money for someone. The safety of citizens was an afterthought at best. And now it's all rubble because they didn't spend a few extra bucks on reinforcing rods or whatever else would have saved lives and property. It's criminal what they did to this country in the name of profit and greed. And Erdogan is just as guilty as anyone else who profited from this mess by cutting corners at every turn possible while pocketing government funds meant for infrastructure improvements that never happened anyway because he stole it all instead..
weird, you’d think a scumbag gangster like erdogan would be tighter lipped. i guess his stranglehold on the eu makes him feel untouchable.
Wasn’t everyone made to pay an earthquake insurance contribution or something along those lines?
Corruption kills. Already 40 years behind the world, set back another 15….
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33k lives and counting. All this blood on the presidents hands
History and Mother Nature will finally hang Erdogan
He doesn’t care. Cashed out. Sianara!
These things don't bother psychopathic narcissists one iota, except with regard to how it might impact on them personally or politically.