See also Report
and photographs taken at Bingöl by Polat Gülkan.
and letter from Murat Balamir
and Comment by Ben Wisner
and Links page
and “Disaster prevention and the 1999 Turkish earthquakes” by Green, P., al-Husseini, A., & Curry, C.
(Abstract below,
Full report to download here)
“Disaster prevention and the 1999 Turkish earthquakes”
by Green, P., al-Husseini, A., & Curry, C.
Executive summary
The primary aim of this research was to investigate the potential culpability and therefore potential criminality of the state in determining the catastrophic outcome of the 1999 Turkish earthquake in the Izmit region of north-western Turkey (herein described as the Kocaeli earthquake).
There is a very significant body of literature addressing the criminal abuses of human rights in Turkey (see Parliamentary Human Rights Group, 1993; Amnesty International, 1998, 2000, 2001; European Commission 2000, Human Rights Foundation of Turkey, 1997, 1998, 2000, Human Rights Watch 2001, Green 2000). A potentially more challenging application of the state crime label and one which has a greater resonance with the practice of western states is to explore state culpability in situations defined as “natural disasters”.
Applying developing theory of state crime with detailed earthquake engineering evidence and analysis we explore the hypothesis that the scale of catastrophe in these Turkish disasters can be understood as state crime. Our theoretical framework drawn from recent work in criminology is that of state crime. The concept of state crime is defined by Green and Ward (2001) as the area of overlap between the violations of human rights and state organizational deviance.
The research explored building failure; regulatory and enforcement failure; the political framework of clientelism and the culture of corruption it encourages; legal regulation; the political economy of earthquake catastrophe; public evaluation of state responsibility and the question of reform.
Methodologically the research pioneered innovative and important developments in the field of state crime. Earthquake engineering and seismological science provided an empirically derived causal framework from within which to advance criminological arguments relating to culpability, criminality, state organizational deviance and victimology.
It would seem that the real problem in analysing natural disasters within this framework is to identify “organizational deviance” and to causally relate that deviance to disaster. The types of organizational deviance which emerged from the research may be summarised as follows:
1. The active pursuit of risk-laden policies
2. The wilful ignoring of scientific warnings and corruption as a strategy to achieve legitimate goals
3. Corruption tolerated or tacitly encouraged because it serves organizational goals or seen as an inevitable consequence of their pursuit
4. Failure to develop national systems of quality assurance in industries such as construction
5. Failure to develop and enforce national systems of industry regulation
6. Encouraging or forcing land settlements in hazardous zones
7. Evidence of post-disaster cover-up; concealment of evidence
8. Active promotion of policies which directly contributed to illegal and corrupt practice in the construction industry
In the immediate aftermath of the Kocaeli earthquake responsibility for the disaster was placed on individual building developers and contractors who allegedly cut corners, used poor quality building materials, failed to employ soil and other safety checks and ignored earthquake proofing regulations. The government and mainstream nationalist media were central in the attribution of this blame. There is little evidence to support this as the central explanation of causality. Rather, a climate of authoritarian statism, wilful disregard of “life safety” issues, systematic human rights violations, clientelistic exchange arrangements and political corruption, in addition to the absence of state regulatory bodies and measures of quality assurance in the construction industry were found to be the most significant factors in the destruction of the region.
Specific decisions impacting on the value of life safety were taken by a combination of national, international, domestic and market forces in the 1980s resulting in a trend that some commentators have termed “free market authoritarianism” (Aybar & Lapavitsas, 2001, p.299). The consequences for Turkey have been devastating. We argue that the scale of loss in the August 17th Turkish earthquake can also be traced to particular consequences of the adoption of these policies. More particularly, the value of life safety was decreased as a result of identifiable actions performed by the state in the pursuit of economic liberalisation.
The disastrous proportions of the 1999 Kocaeli earthquake are thus causally linked to acts and omissions on the part of the Turkish state. We argue that these acts and omissions are best understood as organizational deviance which led to mass human rights violations thus constituting state crime.
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