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A court in Turkey has sentenced the owner and architect of a hotel that collapsed in a 2023 earthquake, killing 72 people, to prison.
Isias Grand owner Ahmet Bozkurt and architect Erdem Yilmaz each received 18 years and five months, the official Anadolu news agency reported. Bozkurt’s son, Mehmet Fatih, was sentenced to 17 years and four months, the report said.
A hotel in the southeastern city of Adiaman was hosting a school volleyball team from Turkish-controlled northern Cyprus and a group of tour guides when the earthquake struck last February.
The three men were convicted of “causing the death or maiming of more than one person through conscious negligence,” Anadolov said.
Turkish Cypriot Prime Minister Unal Ustel said the sentences were too lenient and that the authorities would appeal them, AFP news agency reported.
“The hotel owners did not receive the punishment we expected,” Ustel said. “But despite this, everyone, from those responsible for building the hotel to the architect, was convicted. This partly pleased us.”
More than 50,000 people died in Turkey and Syria as a result of the earthquake on February 6, 2023.
About 160,000 buildings collapsed or were severely damaged, leaving 1.5 million people homeless.
Weeks later, the Turkish government said hundreds of people were under investigation and nearly 200 people had been arrested, including construction contractors and property owners.
A group of 39 people, including boys and girls, teachers and parents from Famagusta Turkish Pedagogical College, were on their way to Adiyaman for a volleyball tournament when the earthquake struck.
Among them, only four parents survived. They managed to dig themselves out from under the rubble, and another 35 people, including all children, died.
The volleyball team chose the seven-story Isias Grand along with as many as 40 tour guides who trained there.
It was one of the most famous hotels in Adiaman, but it collapsed in a few moments.
Isias has been in operation since 2001, but according to scientific analysis, gravel and sand from the local river were mixed with other building materials to form the columns that support the building.
The sheer scale of the earthquake’s building collapse has drawn widespread criticism of the Turkish government for encouraging a building boom while failing to enforce building codes that have been tightened since previous disasters.
