0:00

A

0:05

couple weeks ago, a girl named Havigne

0:07

Killecch was getting ready for a volleyball tournament.

0:10

Our

0:10

colleague, Rune Rasmussen, says, she

0:12

was a rising star. Aving

0:14

killage is this twelve year old

0:16

girl who comes from a family of

0:19

volleyball fanatics. Her father

0:21

was a former volleyball player and now I'll referee

0:23

her uncle the same.

0:31

In videos of Aveen playing, You

0:33

can see her long ponytail swinging in

0:35

her waist, and she races for the ball.

0:38

She's wearing Jersey number two, and

0:40

she's fast. Havin

0:44

is from Cyprus, a small island

0:46

nation in Mediterranean. And

0:48

in early February, she and her teammates

0:50

traveled from their hometown to a tournament

0:53

in Turkey.

0:55

The team arrived just before two

0:57

massive earthquakes would strike the region.

1:00

There's about fifty five players,

1:02

all in all, aged between twelve

1:05

and fourteen, schoolgirls and

1:07

schoolboys, who came and stayed

1:09

in this city in southeastern

1:12

Turkey called Adia Mann. The

1:15

team's head coach booked their stay at the Issia's

1:17

hotel. Which describes itself

1:19

as Adi Mans home away from home.

1:23

The day before they arrived, Hovine and

1:25

her teammates learned they'd have to be split up.

1:28

Diousia's hotel couldn't accommodate the

1:30

whole

1:30

team. So some of the kids

1:32

stayed at another hotel about two blocks

1:34

away. Seems

1:37

like a pretty sort of insignificant decision

1:39

to just change

1:40

hotels. But as it would turn

1:42

out, it was a decision that would have

1:44

extremely dramatic consequences for

1:47

everyone involved.

1:51

Welcome to The Journal. Our show about

1:53

Money, Business and power. I'm

1:55

Ryan Knudson. It's Tuesday,

1:57

February twenty first.

2:04

Coming up on the show, a youth

2:06

volleyball team divided by a twist

2:08

of fate, and how Turkey's building

2:11

standards might have failed them.

2:23

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2:59

Killage learned lot about volleyball

3:01

from her uncle, Sidoti Killage.

3:04

Sidaused to play volleyball

3:05

himself. There's clearly

3:07

a bond between Hovine and her uncle

3:10

through volleyball. Her family talks

3:12

about her this young hope for

3:14

volleyball, not just in the family, but for

3:16

the island.

3:17

So that couldn't go with his knees to the tournament in

3:19

Turkey. He had to stay back home in Cyprus.

3:22

And on February sixth, at

3:24

three seventeen AM, something jolted

3:26

him

3:26

awake. He's got this lamp.

3:29

On the table with candle in it and he notices

3:31

that the flame in the candle dances in

3:33

an unusual way, but he just assumes

3:35

it's a small earthquake and cause back

3:38

to sleep.

3:40

His wife woke him up a few hours later,

3:42

two major earthquakes had struck Turkey,

3:45

where his niece and brother were for the volleyball tremend.

3:48

Sidoti had felt the tremors in Cyprus

3:51

about three hundred miles away. His

3:54

wife told him that his brother was alive, but

3:57

his niece, Hovine, was buried

3:59

under the rubble. So

4:01

Hovine's mother rushed to

4:03

the airport. They managed

4:05

to get a flight but it took a long time

4:07

to get to Adiamon where the tournament was

4:09

held. When they finally landed,

4:12

they found an eerie scene It's

4:14

nine thirty at night. It's dark. It's

4:17

below freezing. And when they

4:19

land at this airport, there's no one

4:21

there. There's no one to check down their IDs or

4:23

their passports. There's no

4:25

taxis. There's no buses. There's not even

4:27

street lights and the street lights outside because

4:30

all the electricity has been knocked out.

4:34

Eventually, Sidoti managed to get a ride

4:36

from an ambulance, which took him to the Ixia's

4:38

hotel, where Hovine and her father had

4:40

been

4:40

staying. The hotel

4:43

was in ruins. Sidoti

4:45

saw his brother, Rejip, wrapped in a

4:47

blanket on the pavement looking desperate

4:50

in there outside in the cold,

4:52

they held each other. And

4:56

they sit there, the two brothers, it's

4:58

dark, and Sida

5:00

told me that he thought to himself,

5:04

there's no way that anyone

5:06

can survive this, but him and his

5:08

brother don't. Tell each other that,

5:10

they just sit there and and wait until

5:12

dawn. And when light

5:14

breaks, then the search and rescue team

5:17

starts working.

5:18

Sidaab began to help dig for potential survivors,

5:21

to help dig for his knees.

5:24

Suna says it was a slow and

5:26

grim process. He recorded

5:29

some audio while he was

5:30

there. People were

5:32

still hoping to find relatives

5:34

under the rubble. So was

5:36

quiet. People hush

5:39

each other so they can hear voices

5:42

from from underground. Mhmm. So

5:45

all you really hear when you walk through town is

5:47

diggers and excavators that are

5:50

sort of going through the rubble to

5:52

try and find survivors. And apart

5:54

from that, it's pretty quiet, eerily quiet.

5:58

It takes them a couple of days before they

6:00

find anyone. The

6:02

first two bodies they pull out from the rubble

6:04

are adults. One coach and an assistant.

6:07

And the next parties are are

6:09

two young brothers, both

6:12

age between twelve and fourteen from the boys

6:14

valuable team. And gradually,

6:17

they recover the

6:19

whole team and the

6:21

adults, but none of them are alive. And

6:24

what about Hazeen?

6:28

The earthquake was in the early hours

6:30

of Monday and on Friday morning, they

6:33

find

6:33

Heaven. She's body number twenty

6:36

five. So that's it. He remembers.

6:39

Everyone from the team who'd been pulled from the

6:41

rubble of the Aesia's hotel was dead.

6:44

Twenty five school children and ten adults.

6:47

What happened to the players that

6:49

ended up at that other hotel?

6:51

Well, they all survived. You

6:53

have these two very similar looking hotels,

6:56

three hundred yards way. You could

6:58

almost stand on the balcony at the

7:00

park hotel and see the ECS hotel.

7:03

And they park

7:05

hotel has some cosmetic damage outside,

7:07

but it did not collapse and no one died

7:10

inside the park

7:11

hotel. Why?

7:13

I mean, if these two hotels were supposedly

7:16

so similar, then why did one collapse another

7:18

stay standing?

7:19

But think the answers to that question is

7:21

kind of the heart of the reckoning that Turkey

7:24

is going through now. That

7:28

reckoning after the break.

7:40

When you walk into AINH, you're going

7:42

to hear people saying no way.

7:44

They have this over and

7:46

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7:58

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8:00

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8:02

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8:13

I'm here at what used to be the ECS

8:15

Hotel. In Adia Mann. And

8:18

the only reason I could find it

8:20

was because I looked it up on Google

8:23

the building is completely gone

8:25

or rather the front of the building is

8:28

completely gone as Suneau

8:30

walked among the ruins of the Ixia's hotel,

8:32

where Hovine and many of her teammates were killed.

8:35

They're among the more than forty five thousand

8:38

people in the region who died following the earthquakes.

8:41

The toll is still rising. After another

8:43

pair of new earthquakes yesterday, everything

8:46

is rubble and debris,

8:48

as the paper flying around, as

8:52

I end poking out in in

8:54

the old directions. But otherwise, it's

8:56

just really just amount

8:58

of of rubble.

9:03

Turkey sits along two major fault

9:05

lines and has been through devastating earthquakes

9:07

before. In nine nineteen ninety

9:09

nine, more than seventeen thousand people

9:12

were killed following a quake near Istanbul.

9:15

Afterward, lawmakers pushed for stronger

9:17

building requirements. But despite

9:19

tougher laws, a lot of new construction

9:22

still wasn't up to

9:23

code. Rather

9:25

than fix these buildings or tear them

9:27

down, president Egypt Tayyip Erdogan

9:30

gave builders so called amnesty. Is

9:32

this amnesty that legalizes construction

9:36

and buildings that have previously been found

9:38

to be illegal or to be violating

9:41

building

9:41

codes. The policy let building

9:43

code violators off the hook if they paid

9:45

a fee. Other Turkish

9:48

presidents have allowed construction amnesty before,

9:50

but not like Erdogan. In

9:52

twenty nineteen, he used Amnesty

9:54

as a talking point on the campaign trail.

10:00

Erdogan said that widespread construction amnesty

10:02

would fuel a construction

10:04

boom, create jobs, and

10:06

provide much needed housing. Soon

10:09

as his heir to one's government has offered amnesty

10:11

multiple times in the twenty years he's been

10:13

in power, both as president and

10:15

prime minister. And he's

10:17

mostly done it before

10:18

elections. His critics say

10:20

that it's a way of paying his loyalists,

10:23

and they say there's a certain amount

10:25

of of nepotism and corruption involved as

10:28

well. Well, let let me get this straight.

10:30

So so there's like a political program so

10:33

that buildings that have been found to have

10:35

code violations, like in other words buildings

10:37

that are not necessarily safe to

10:39

be in, those violations can

10:42

just be washed away under this this

10:45

amnesty program. They don't have to bring them up to code

10:47

or fix them or change

10:48

them. They just get a free pass.

10:51

Yeah. That's right. Yeah.

10:53

Soon as it says that a few years ago, when Erdogan

10:56

was pushing for another round of amnesty, most

10:58

members of parliament supported

11:00

it. But

11:01

there were also warnings. There was

11:03

an MP from the the People's

11:05

Democratic Party. And this MP

11:07

went to parliament and said, if you use

11:10

these construction MSTs in an earthquake

11:12

zone, like Southeast and Turkey,

11:14

you risk tens of thousands of people's lives.

11:17

But since twenty eighteen, the government

11:19

has granted seven million licenses

11:22

under amnesty policies.

11:24

So these construction MSDs

11:26

have been widespread. They've been used

11:28

over the – like across the country.

11:30

And at the moment alone, around

11:33

eleven thousand buildings have received

11:35

this construction

11:36

amnesty. Did

11:38

the SCS hotel receive amnesty? I

11:40

can't say of a certain that it's received construction

11:43

amnesty allegedly. It did

11:45

not live up to building codes. Online,

11:48

you can see photos of

11:51

the lobby of the hotel where

11:54

the the columns look unusually thin

11:57

which is a common practice. Supermarkets

12:00

hotels will do this. They'll they'll sort

12:02

of shave or, like, little thin to columns

12:04

to make more space for groceries in

12:06

the supermarket, for space in the

12:08

lobby, or in the case of the CSO

12:10

sale for parking spaces on

12:12

the

12:12

ground. Photos of the SCS

12:14

hotels underground parking lot showed similar

12:17

columns. You can see the bottom

12:19

half of the column has been

12:21

thinned. You can see it on photos that visible

12:24

is almost shaped like an upside down

12:26

bowling

12:26

pin. What

12:29

if architects and engineering experts that you

12:31

spoke was said about the way that these

12:33

pillars look and the way that this hotel looks.

12:36

They said that this is an example of construction

12:38

that is dangerous in an earthquake zone.

12:42

The owner of the Akcea's hotel has not

12:44

commented. Since

12:46

the earthquake, there have been lots of reports

12:48

of shot a construction around

12:49

Turkey. This man points to the structural

12:52

damage, buildings like his made of concrete,

12:54

too brittle against the violent movements

12:56

of an

12:57

earthquake. There

12:59

had been concerns that water was

13:01

weakening the building. The weight

13:03

of the floors suspended above a large

13:05

empty shop space is a difficult design

13:07

to survive an earthquake.

13:11

So what are people saying now about air

13:14

to one in this in this policy of construction

13:16

amnesty, now that the earthquake has

13:18

hit

13:19

it, and we're seeing this this horrific

13:22

toll A lot of Turks are saying

13:24

that Erdogan has blood on his hands

13:26

because of these policies

13:28

that have led to just

13:31

mass legalization of buildings

13:34

that are not safe to live in. What

13:36

does president Erdogan said about this?

13:38

Erdogan said that ninety eight percent

13:41

of the affected buildings in Southern Turkey

13:44

were built before nineteen

13:46

ninety

13:46

nine. Implying that

13:48

they have not been built and

13:50

legalized during his tenure.

13:53

The Turkish chamber of engineers and the

13:55

anchor a chamber of architect x have disputed

13:57

those numbers. Since

14:00

the earthquakes this month, more than two

14:03

hundred people are facing legal action,

14:05

there has been a string of

14:06

arrest. It's like a daily of contractors,

14:09

of building managers, land

14:12

owners, who are

14:14

accused of violating building

14:16

codes and and restrictions on on

14:19

construction, but dozens people have been

14:21

arrested since the earthquakes, including

14:24

the owner of the Aesia's hotel. Last

14:27

week, the chief public prosecutor of

14:29

Adi Mans said the hotel's owner had been arrested

14:32

and was subject to an investigation. Along

14:34

with three hotel managers, none

14:37

of them have commented. Is

14:39

it is it really possible to hold anyone

14:41

accountable for this policy?

14:44

Because it was a legal policy

14:46

and there were so many players up

14:49

and down the chain of construction from builders

14:51

to regulators who were involved

14:53

in the decision to let these buildings get

14:55

built and stay up without

14:58

being up to code.

14:59

Yeah. I think that's where we get into sort of interpretation

15:01

of the law and and where it can get

15:04

tricky because even though you get

15:06

MST4, building is still responsible

15:09

for for keeping it safe

15:11

against

15:12

earthquakes. In other words,

15:14

Although Amnesty legalizes buildings that were

15:16

previously not up to code, it doesn't

15:18

absolve the owner of responsibility in

15:21

the case of an earthquake. The

15:23

people that are being arrested, do

15:26

they also span up and down the

15:28

decision tree or are they mostly people that are

15:30

responsible for building and designing

15:32

the buildings? We

15:34

haven't seen any higher

15:36

ups take the fall for this. It's

15:38

also important to point out here that all the

15:40

responsibility doesn't lie with politicians

15:43

over the president, legalizing a

15:46

building in Turkey is a multilayered

15:48

process, and it goes all the way from the government

15:50

that choose these entities all the way down

15:52

to the engineers who

15:54

construct the buildings. Have

15:56

experts provided any estimates about

15:59

how much worse

16:01

the death toll was in this earthquake

16:04

as a result of these amnesty

16:06

programs?

16:08

No. I think that's so difficult to gauge,

16:10

but I don't think there's anyone

16:13

who doubts that that the shoddy

16:15

construction practices in Turkey.

16:17

Has a major role to play in this tragedy.

16:23

That's what makes this this

16:25

disaster even more heartbreaking is

16:27

that it didn't have

16:30

to be this bad. Yeah.

16:32

Like, I can't remember a more

16:34

stark example of a populist policy

16:37

that has had such fatal

16:40

consequences on the ground for people who

16:42

are just trying to live their lives. In

16:44

this case, twenty five school children

16:46

from Cyprus. And a lot

16:48

of people in Southern Turkey will say that there's

16:50

a direct line for the policies being

16:52

made in Ankara to

16:55

the fate of people buried under rubble.

17:00

Regardless of who is responsible for building

17:03

AmSty's, it doesn't take away the

17:05

pain of the survivors. Suna

17:07

spoke with one of Havigne's coaches who

17:10

made it out alive. And I

17:12

asked him if he felt

17:14

lucky that he had survived. And

17:17

he said, of course, he didn't feel lucky.

17:20

Every day since my survival has been

17:23

has been really hard because I

17:26

guess, there's there's some level of

17:28

of survivors killed, but he also felt

17:31

really guilty. It's what the

17:33

parents of all those children who had died. He

17:35

said, these parents entrust us with

17:37

their children. And he just felt

17:39

completely crushed that twenty

17:42

five of them ended up dead.

18:00

That's all for today, Tuesday, February

18:03

twenty first. The journal is a

18:05

co production of Gimlet and The Wall Street Journal.

18:07

If you like our show, follow us on Spotify

18:10

or wherever you get your podcasts. We're out

18:12

every weekday afternoon. Thanks

18:15

for listening. See you tomorrow.

18:21

Hello. I'm Jack Howe, host of a

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