Throughout February of 2023, headlines around the world chronicled the damage caused by a pair of devastating 7.8 and 7.5 magnitude earthquakes in Turkey. The earthquakes were—and still are—the deadliest in Turkey’s history, killing over 44,000 citizens and incurring an estimated $34.2 billion in direct physical damage. And that cost estimate doesn’t include long-term reconstruction and recovery costs, which the World Bank estimates could be twice as high.
As Turkey picked up the pieces in the weeks following the tragic event, the resurfacing of 2019 campaign footage caused many to point fingers at Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for allowing builders to surpass building codes at scale. In an effort to speed up construction and cut costs, Erdogan had created amnesties allowing contractors to ignore critical safety regulations specifically designed to make apartment blocks, homes, and commercial buildings more resistant to earthquakes. These amnesties helped hasten the construction of large housing projects in the city of Maras and Hatay province, among other locations. In Gaziantep province, which was hit particularly hard by the earthquakes, the government granted more than 40,000 amnesty certificates by 2018. Engineers and architects believe this led to a lack of seismic integrity and stability, which likely contributed to Turkey’s high death toll.