Justice pledge for Turkish Cypriots killed in Turkish earthquake

Those held responsible for the deaths of 35 Cypriots when the Isias hotel in the Turkish city of Adiyaman collapsed during last year’s earthquakes “will get the punishment they deserve”, Turkish Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc said on Wednesday.

Speaking at a joint event held with Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar in the Black Sea town of Bartin, he made reference to the term “champion angels”, the moniker given to the 24 children who made up the Famagusta Turk Maarif Koleji (TMK) school volleyball team, who were killed at the hotel.

“We lost our champion angels who were in Turkey at the time of the earthquake in Adiyaman and we experienced great pain … There is currently an ongoing trial process, and we are following that process closely. Those responsible will of course get the punishment they deserve,” he said.

“No one, especially the champion angels’ families, should have any doubts about this.”

The trial of the 11 people who have been held responsible for the deaths of the 35 Cypriots and 37 others who were killed when the hotel collapsed is set to resume on October 22.

All 11 people currently stand accused of “causing death by conscious negligence” at Adiyaman’s third high criminal court, and, if found guilty, could face a maximum of 22 and a half years in prison each.

However, the families of those killed have demanded that the 11 be charged with intentionally killing all 72 victims. Most recently, hundreds of people marched across northern Nicosia in April to demand that the charges be upgraded, while a similar protest had been held in Famagusta in November.

Proceedings have thus far been slow, with a total of four university reports having been written into the hotel’s collapse.

The first two were written by Trabzon’s Karadeniz Technical University and the Istanbul Technical University, and outlined how sand and gravel from a local river had been used in the hotel’s construction, and how supporting columns had been cut at the hotel, among numerous other deficiencies.

The third, written by Ankara’s Gazi University, had generated controversy as it had been much less scathing than the other two, and had led to the release of two of the suspects who had initially been held in custody following the first phase of the trial in January.

Due to the controversy generated by the Gazi University report, the court had ordered that the Dokuz Eylul University in Izmir write a fourth report on the matter.

In May, the Adiyaman Provincial governor’s office had given permission for criminal investigations to be launched into the conduct of four retired former civil servants when the Isias hotel’s owners had filed applications for various construction and change of use permits over the years.

It had been found that permits had been given to the Isias hotel which did not comply with the relevant laws, and that information written on permits did not match the work which had been carried out at the hotel.