New law aims to make Istanbul earthquake-safe, but it has its critics

Municipality, showed his plan for the urban transformation in a PowerPoint presentation. A map showed Zeytinburnu and was littered with red, orange, and yellow dots denoting high, medium, and low earthquake risk. In the corner, a part of the map was filled with red bordering the Sea of Marmara.

“That is Sumer,” Akif told the small audience.

The Dispatch notes that Istanbul lies thirteen miles north of the North Anatolian Fault, the intersection of the Eurasian and Anatolian plates. An earthquake of a 7.0 magnitude or higher has struck the city every century for the past 1,500 years, the last one hitting in 1894, which has some people thinking another one can happen at any time. Seismologists are married now, sayingearthquakes have historically been moving west along the fault line and creeping toward Istanbul.

Estimates of Istanbul’s population range from twelve and nineteen million people, a significant boost from two million people fiftyyears ago. During the waves of migration to Istanbul during the 1960s,1970s, and 1980s, the government gave citizens free permitsto add to their homes, which resulted in single-story residents becoming 4-or 5-story buildings on unstable foundations.

In Sumer,the government has promised residentsthat under the reconstruction plan, they will receivenew, ifsmaller, apartments in the same neighborhoods. Activists are worried, however,that as the land and housing increases in value, residents will be priced out to distant suburbs.

Chian Baysal, an activist who worked for the UN Advisory Group on Forced Evictions,is not a fan of the idea.

“According to geological reports, 92 percent of land in Turkey is under earthquake risk. So, according to law the government can intervene all over Turkey,” Baysal told the Dispatch. “And opening up cases against implementation is against the law. You can only [argue] for the price, but your house will still be demolished.”

Baysal worries that this law will be used to clear out poor neighborhoods to make way for hotel and towering apartments buildings. Her concerns seem warranted as local governments have already begun to smooth the way for contractors to make their proposals.

Zafer Alsac, one of Zeytinburnu’s four deputy mayors, believes that Sumer will be an example for the rest of Turkey as the first neighborhood to be transformed under the new law. He assures that “90 percent of the residents” support the law, but instead of talking about earthquakes, Alsac prefers to talk about the opportunities the new law will present.

“Projects get approved in about three days, whereas it takes other municipalities about one month,” he said, proudly. “Our purpose is to increase the price of land to its real value.”

Construction has already started around the boarders of Sumer. One apartment building which will house the first group of residents is nearing completion, and the municipality says that 400 of the 750 new apartments will be given relocated residents in September.