Hotel collapse suspects freed ‘because they hoped it would not’

The six suspects who were spared jail in the case of the collapse of the Isias hotel in the Turkish city of Adiyaman, which killed 72 people, including 35 Cypriots, were freed as they had “hoped” that the hotel would not collapse.

Adiyaman’s first high criminal court released the reasoning of its verdict, which it had handed down last month, on Wednesday, and offered a list of justifications for the decision not to send the six suspects to prison.

It pointed out that the Adiyaman province had been categorised as “high-risk” for earthquakes, and highlighted the fact that the two earthquakes which occurred on the day the hotel collapsed were strong, measuring 7.7 and 7.6 on the Richter scale respectively.

On this front, it stated that “an earthquake of such a magnitude has not occurred in the Adiyaman province in recent history”, before going on to point out that “most” of the six defendants live in Adiyaman.

Additionally, it pointed out that decades had passed between the issuing of planning permits and operation permits and the hotel’s collapse in 2023, before offering its conclusion.

“It has been concluded that a definitive conclusion cannot be reached as to whether the defendants committed the alleged crimes with a willingness to accept any outcome or with ‘probable intent’, and in this context, it has been concluded that the defendants’ actions should be evaluated within the scope of ‘conscious negligence’,” it said.

This, it added, is “because they hoped that the foreseeable outcome would not occur or relied on chance”.

In short, therefore, the court decided to convict the defendants of causing death by conscious negligence rather than the more severe charge of causing death by probable intent as they had hoped the hotel would not collapse after it was built.

Three of the six suspects who were spared jail by Adiyaman’s first high criminal court –former Adiyaman deputy mayor Osman Bulut, civil engineer Bilal Balci, and former Adiyaman town planning director Mehmet Salih Alkayis – were handed uspended 10-year prison sentences and then released on bail conditions.

The three other defendants, former Adiyaman town planning director, building auditor Abdurrahman Karaarslan, and technician Fazli Karakus were all acquitted of all charges and as such freed.

After the ruling had been made, Pervin Aksoy Ipekcioglu, whose daughter Serin was among those killed at the Isias hotel, expressed disgust at it, saying that “our motherland’s courts told me, ‘you were guilty for sending her, I condemn you to a lifetime of her absence without justice being secured’”.

“Now, those responsible get to go home, and I go home without her. Only one word crossed my mind: disgrace … Then, I looked around. Those who sent us were there for the show, but they were absent when the verdict was announced, to avoid making eye contact with the system to which they were grateful,” she said.

She added that she does not forgive the judges who made the ruling, and said, “may every breath taken by every immoral person they allowed to live free through those decisions be forbidden to them”.

It is expected that the families will appeal the ruling, as well as a ruling made by Adiyaman’s third high criminal court in 2024 which saw six other defendants, including the hotel’s owner Ahmet Bozkurt and architect Erdem Yilmaz, found guilty of causing death by conscious negligence, and five more freed.

The families of the dead wish for the convictions to be upgraded to the more serious charges of causing death by probable intent.

On this front, some have suggested that the case could be brought before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), with former Turkish Cypriot chief negotiator Kudret Ozersay saying that it is “highly likely” that if no court in Turkey will grant the families’ demand, the case will be taken to the Strasbourg court.

He said the possibility of a conviction for causing death by possible intent was “deliberately ignored” by the Adiyaman court, and said that “the principles of a fair trial in these criminal proceedings are also seriously questionable”.

“The children who lost their lives have become symbols for the Turkish Cypriot community. These events created a collective trauma. This pain is etched not only into the memory of the families, but into the collective memory of the entire community,” he said.