Owner and architect of Turkey quake collapse hotel jailed

A court in Turkey has sentenced the owner and architect of a hotel which collapsed in an earthquake in 2023, killing 72 people, to jail.

The owner of the Isias Grand, Ahmet Bozkurt, and architect Erdem Yilmaz, were each given 18 years and five months, the official Anadolu news agency reported. Bozkurt's son, Mehmet Fatih, was sentenced to 17 years and four months, it said.

The hotel, in the south-eastern city of Adiyaman, was hosting a school volleyball team from Turkish-controlled northern Cyprus and a group of tourist guides when the quake hit last February.

The three men were convicted of "causing the death or injury of more than one person through conscious negligence", Anadolou said.

Turkish Cypriot Prime Minister Unal Ustel said the sentences were too lenient and that authorities would appeal, AFP new agency reported.

"Hotel owners did not get the punishment we had expected," Ustel said. "But despite that, everyone from those responsible in the hotel's construction to the architect was sentenced. That made us partially happy."

More than 50,000 people died in Turkey and Syria in the quake on 6 February 2023.

Some 160,000 buildings collapsed or were badly damaged, leaving 1.5 million people homeless.

The Turkish government said a few weeks later that 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 Education College, had travelled to Adiyaman for a volleyball tournament when the earthquake struck.

Four parents were the only survivors among them. They managed to dig themselves out of the rubble, while 35 others including all the children were killed.

The volleyball group had picked the seven-storey Isias Grand, along with as many as 40 tourist guides who were there for training.

It was one of Adiyaman's best-known hotels but it collapsed in moments.

The Isias had been operating since 2001 but, according to scientific analysis, gravel and sand from the local river had been mixed with other construction materials to form the columns supporting the building.

The sheer scale of building collapses in the earthquake prompted widespread criticism of the Turkish government for encouraging a construction boom while failing to enforce building regulations, which had been tightened after earlier disasters.