Turkey’s Interior and Labor ministries have blocked investigations into their staff over possible negligence in a devastating fire that killed 78 people earlier this year at a winter resort in Bolu province, Deutsche Welle Turkish edition reported.
The fire, which erupted in the early morning hours of January 21 at the Grand Kartal Hotel, a 12-story ski resort in Kartalkaya popular with vacationers during Turkey’s midterm school holiday, claimed the lives of 78 people and injured 51 others. Among the victims were 36 minors.
Despite public outrage and mounting evidence pointing to serious shortcomings in safety oversight, neither ministry has granted prosecutors the required permission to investigate the bureaucrats under their supervision. Public officials in Turkey cannot be prosecuted for acts committed in the line of duty unless their supervising ministry explicitly allows it, a legal mechanism that often shields state employees from accountability.
The families of two hotel fire victims, 25-year-old friends Alp Mercan and Yiğit Gençbay, applied to the Interior Ministry on February 27, claiming that the Bolu Provincial Special Administration, under the oversight of the Interior Ministry, had failed to properly inspect the hotel despite clear fire safety deficiencies. They wanted governors who had served in the province to be investigated for their role in the tragedy. However, the ministry did not respond within the legally mandated timeframe of one month. Under Turkish law, such silence is considered an implicit denial of a request.
This prompted the families to file a petition at an administrative court in Bolu, accusing the ministry of deliberately obstructing justice. In their petition, they said the ministry’s failure to even respond was not only unacceptable but potentially criminal under the Turkish Penal Code. “The ministry’s refusal to open a proper investigation or even acknowledge our request has deepened the trauma for the victims’ families and undermined public trust in accountability,” the petition read.
The families demanded that all governors who served in Bolu since April 10, 2009, the date when the authority to issue licenses was delegated to provincial administrations, be investigated. The list includes current Bolu Governor Abdulaziz Aydın and his six predecessors.
Similarly, the Ministry of Labor and Social Security also failed to respond to a separate request filed the same day in February, which called for investigations into ministry staff for failing to enforce workplace safety regulations. According to an expert report cited in the family’s complaint, the hotel had not employed a legally required occupational safety specialist and lacked basic fire precautions, shortcomings that the ministry failed to detect or act upon.
The families are seeking permission for the investigation of several officials, including those currently or formerly serving as general directors and deputy directors of occupational health and safety as well as inspectors and other public employees tasked with overseeing safety compliance at the time the hotel was operating.
The tragedy in Kartalkaya sent shockwaves across the country, with videos circulating on social media of people desperately screaming for help or jumping from windows and the hotel becoming a symbol of what critics say is the country’s dangerous mix of poor oversight, lax building standards and political negligence.
The high death toll at the hotel was attributed to the lack of fire warning systems and fire safety measures and sparked a blame game between the tourism ministry and the Bolu Municipality, run by the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP).
Under Turkey’s Law No. 4483 on the Trial of Civil Servants and Other Public Officials, prosecutors must obtain ministerial approval before launching criminal proceedings against public employees for alleged misconduct in office. This process, critics argue, creates a systemic barrier to justice and fosters a culture of impunity for bureaucrats.