JAKARTA - Turkish authorities have arrested 180 people amid ongoing investigations over the collapse of buildings during the February 6 earthquake that killed more than 50,000 people.
The majority of those arrested were contractors and building managers, according to Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag, who spoke after a meeting with Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu in Diyarbakir City, reported The National News on February 26.
Ankara opened an investigation after more than 160,000 buildings collapsed in the south of the country, causing millions of people to lose their homes in freezing temperatures.
The quake killed more than 44,000 people in Turkey and nearly 6,000 in neighboring Syria, where survivors are still struggling to meet basic needs.
Rescue teams are still removing victims from the rubble, with the death toll continuing to rise.
Nearly 80 contractors of buildings were among those detained, the minister said, as well as 13 people who made changes to buildings.
"No debris was moved without looking for evidence," said Bozdag.
He said more than 600 people had been investigated for the collapse of the building after the earthquake, which was attended by more than 9,000 aftershocks.
A mayor in Gaziantep Province was arrested in connection with the investigation, state media reported.
It is known that the government will introduce legislation to impose "heavy penalties" on people seeking profit from earthquakes, including renting out to families who have lost their homes, Bozdag added.
Speaking shortly after the earthquake, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed to fully rebuild the earthquake-hit area within a year, a major task with several cities almost entirely falling debris.
On Saturday, World Food Program chief David Beasley said the situation in the city of Antakya was "apocalyptic".
"The whole environment has been flattened, houses destroyed, schools and shops closed, alive and torn apart. The scale of the destruction here is completely unacceptable," explained David Beasley.
The government will begin construction of 200,000 houses in the next two to three months for earthquake victims, according to the Ministry of Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change.
Later, there will be no buildings that are more than four floors tall and the distance from the fault line will be calculated, according to the restructuring plan announced by the ministry.
Authorities will also seek to reduce congestion in previously built-in areas.
It is known that nearly two million people who lost their homes as a result of the disaster were placed in tents, container houses, other facilities in the region and in other parts of Turkey, the national disaster management authority said.
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