Could you link to any sources? This sounds big.

It is all over the social media and serious journalists picked up the story.

Here is the video of the lawyer(Bedia Büyükgebiz) live vlogging from the location, which went viral: https://twitter.com/haskologlu/status/1624433879154102275

The official statement is that all these paperwork and test results are already digitised but the lawyers say that the originals still need to be kept around for some time and destroyed under a strict protocol so to ensure that the digitised versions are indeed faithful to the originals(running over the bulldozers over the building with the documents is not part of the protocol).

Also, the city still severely lacks heavy machinery for the rescue efforts and people find it suspicious why would the government would commission these to demolish a one story building, even if the building was damaged. Journalists on the ground say that they haven't heard of any other building being demolished for safety reasons.

Building companies are close to the government everywhere. Try getting permits without access to the city council or mayor. Turkey is a major faultline (and most of the northern Mediterranean) and seems to constantly have earthquakes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_in_Turkey

In the same area of the earthquakes now (the size of the UK) there was an earthquake in 115 AD that killed 260 thousand people:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/115_Antioch_earthquake

The source of the 260 thousand killed is unknown and a century after the event, according to the same Wikipedia article, but Antioch also had a Circus, built during the time of Augustus, that could host 80 thousand spectators.

> Try getting permits without access to the city council or mayor

It's depressing/comforting to know that my town is not unique in this regard.

I have the impression that local power is always more corrupt than central/national power. Less scrutiny and more opportunity for doing dirt without getting caught.

There was another, smaller (est 7.5 vs. 7.0) quake in late May of 526:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/526_Antioch_earthquake

(followed by a fire) that also reportedly killed 250 thousand. The two figures are close.

A lot of historically big numbers turn out to be greatly exaggerated, maybe as a part of the storytelling process. For example, some old books claimed the toll of the 1737 Calcutta (quake or cyclone) was around 300,000 - while there were no more than 10,000 residents at the time. https://rashidfaridi.com/2008/05/13/earthquakes-in-asia/

Will be interesting to see, were the responsibility dominos stop.

Exactly. They're not scams. It is much worse than that. Everything was legalised by Turkey's government.

This is why all the building company CEOs will walk free because their lawyers can produce the paperwork that proves everything was above board. AKP is checkmate.

Also "Why did so many buildings collapse?" https://www.bbc.com/news/64568826

Quote: In Turkey [..] the government has provided periodic "construction amnesties" - effectively legal exemptions for the payment of a fee, for structures built without the required safety certificates. These have been passed since the 1960s (with the latest in 2018). [..]Up to 75,000 buildings across the affected earthquake zone in southern Turkey have been given construction amnesties[..]

This was also mentioned in this article.

> Construction amnesties, which allow owners to register unlicensed properties or ones that violate building codes in exchange for a fine, have made a bad situation much worse. Mr Erdogan’s government passed several such amnesties, the latest in 2018, ahead of general elections.