A former district mayor from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) was given a prison sentence of 16 years, three months for his role in the in the death of 26 people in a building that collapsed as a result of two devastating earthquakes that hit Turkey last year, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported.
On February 6, 2023, 7.8 and 7.5-magnitude earthquakes struck Turkey, claiming over 53,000 lives and leaving millions homeless in 11 provinces in the country’s south and southeast.
Ökkeş Kavak, 60, a building contractor and the former mayor of the Nurdağı district from the AKP who was elected in the local election of March 2019, was one of nine defendants accused of involvement in the deaths of 26 people in the Kavak building.
The Islahiye High Criminal Court in Gaziantep announced its rulings in the trial at the final hearing held on Thursday.
Four other defendants in the trial received the same sentence on charges of “causing the death and injury of more than one person with conscious negligence,” although they denied the charges and asked for an acquittal.
Two other defendants, who were not under pre-trial detention, were each given a prison sentence of seven years, six months.
According to the indictment, the construction of the building began illegally in 1998 without a building permit and was completed in 2001. Kavak, who was not mayor at the time, worked as the contractor for many buildings in Nurdağı, where hundreds of people died in the earthquakes after some 2,000 buildings collapsed.
A building permit was later issued in December 2013, using false documents that claimed that the construction had just started. However, the building never obtained a building use permit.
Evidence in the indictment shows that the defendants failed to fulfill their duties and responsibilities by obtaining the building permit based on forged documents and without verifying compliance with the construction code at the time of licensing. They were held responsible for the building’s collapse and the resulting loss of life due to negligence.
Kavak also faces criminal charges in another trial due to his alleged role in the death of 36 people in another building in Nurdağı.
He was arrested after the earthquakes and removed from office by the interior ministry as a result of the investigation.
Municipalities in quake-stricken cities faced accusations of disregarding safety guidelines when issuing construction permits and are held responsible for the massive damage caused by the earthquakes.
The February 6 earthquakes leveled thousands of buildings and sparked outrage from victims and people across Turkey over poor-quality construction, given the fact that Turkey is located on major fault lines.