'We need 100 years to solve this': the long battle to save Istanbul from an earthquake

Nearly 18 months after large quakes in south-eastern Turkey, engineers and officials are ringing the alarm bell over the risk of a devastating natural disaster in Turkey's largest city

Istanbul sits in an active seismic zone and is prone to earthquakes, but experts warn the city is not ready for a major natural disaster. AFP

Sebnem Kirmaci loved her 1980s apartment in the leafy Istanbul district of Kadikoy, its wide balcony the perfect sunbathing spot for her two rescue dogs, Bronco and Marley.

“They loved it. And I had a huge garden,” said Ms Sebnem, 51, a magazine editor. “The buildings of the 80s had large windows too.”

But last September, when the local council deemed it a “risky structure” in the event of a large earthquake, Ms Sebnem took the hard decision to join other owners in the 13-storey block and agree to its demolition. She moved out a month later, and the building has now been torn down. In its place lies a bare piece of land, waiting for a contractor to build a new, supposedly earthquake-proof building.

The Istanbul resident is not happy about the process, and about losing her old apartment and its large garden. But she is resigned to it, amid the legal difficulties of resisting demolition and the alternative prospect of remaining in a fragile apartment in a city waiting for its next large earthquake.

“When it comes to a matter of life and death, I would totally say, yes, [these houses] must be renewed – but in such a way that protects the environment,” she said.

Her house is one of tens of thousands of older buildings in Istanbul being demolished and rebuilt in a procedure known as “urban transformation”. The idea, in theory, is to reduce the number of people living in old buildings that do not meet the more stringent modern safety codes introduced after a quake in 1999 east of Istanbul left over 18,000 people dead.

“Buildings constructed before 2000 were built according to a code that was written in a very generalised way, not to mitigate the risk of earthquakes,” said Murat Yun, head of the earthquake risk management and urban improvement department at Istanbul Municipality. “Because of that, and because we know building techniques have changed, these buildings were not built to fit the reality of a disaster happening in Istanbul.”

Worst case scenario

Officials are planning using predictions that an earthquake as large as 7.7 on the Richter scale will occur along the North Anatolian Fault Line, which runs through the Marmara Sea south of Istanbul.

“The worst case scenario is that there is an earthquake of magnitude 7.7. And the other one, which is more optimistic, is 7.5. There's a kind of consensus – scientists are agreed that the scenario of 7.5 will happen,” said Kemal Duran, head of earthquake and ground research at Istanbul Municipality.

That would make the quake roughly similar in size to the twin tremors that rocked south-eastern Turkey and northern Syria in February last year, killing more than 50,000 people. That quake prompted action from Istanbul authorities, aware of the risks of a quake in a city home to more than 16 million people.

“Since the February 6 earthquake, Istanbul municipality and its joint institutions prepared an earthquake preparation and action plan, and we are proceeding according to that plan,” Murat Yun said.

But while the city's gas network has automatic cut-offs and risk signage for a possible quake-induced tsunami is in place, senior officials admit that Turkey's largest metropolis is not entirely ready.

“Unfortunately, pre-disaster actions are far behind the global scale – other countries are well prepared,” said Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, in response to questions about earthquake risk in a press conference earlier this year. “We need to speed up 5-10 times so that urban transformation works.”

It is not possible to predict when exactly the quake will occur. But Istanbul’s history can help read its patterns.

“When it comes to Istanbul, we have information that goes back to the BC period, because many cultures came here and wrote documents – Romans, Ottomans and Byzantines,” said Haluk Eyidogan, a seismologist and former Istanbul MP for Turkey’s main opposition party. Records show that in the past 2,000 years, there have been 70 earthquakes of more than magnitude 6 in the Marmara Sea, he added.

The lives of Istanbul’s residents are essentially in the hands of a combination of building cement strength, soil type and the location of their home, according to municipality officials, engineers and architects interviewed by The National. Their fate also comes down to whether they can afford to move out of unsafe homes, and rent alternative accommodation while developers rebuild.

About half of Istanbul’s 1.2 million buildings will not withstand a quake, engineers said.

“It's a reality also noted by politicians and officials that there are between 600,000 and 700,000 buildings that are not resistant to a quake,” said Nusret Suna, chairman of the board of the Turkish Chamber of Civil Engineers. These include buildings built before the stricter codes were introduced following the 1999 quake.

The most vulnerable buildings are those along Istanbul’s Marmara Sea coast, and in the city’s west, where large numbers of low-quality buildings and weak, sandy soil increase the risk of building collapse and death in the event of a quake.

“The quality of the land, the quality of the building stocks, and the proximity to the fault line,” are all risk factors in building collapse, according to Mr Duran of Istanbul Municipality.

Urban transformation

Istanbul is a place where tangles of roads criss-cross each other, and buildings are packed like blocks of playing cards stacked vertically along narrow alleyways. With such great population density, officials are expecting a death toll from a future quake in the tens of thousands.

“Currently there are more than 1.2 million buildings, and now we say officially 16 million of the population but with illegal migrants, it reaches 20 million. So the worst case scenario will be 50,000 dead,” Kemal Duran said.

Officials are aware of both the slow progress of rebuilding and reinforcing Istanbul’s housing stock. Of about 800,000 buildings constructed before the stricter earthquake safety codes, only 85,000 of them have been torn down and rebuilt, officials said.

“We are aware of this reality, and we have accepted it. We actually told the central government that since 2012, if the progress continues at this rate, we need another 100 years to solve this problem,” said Murat Yun. “So we need to work together with the central government. We are ready to work together with the government.”

The process of “urban transformation” has come under criticism, including by those who have agreed to it for the sake of a safer home in the long term. Mrs Sebnem described buildings reconstructed without due care for green spaces or attractive, liveable design, and apparent hunger for profit among building contractors. The companies rebuild existing owners’ apartments and profit from selling properties on additional floors at high prices.

“We need to renew these buildings, but it needs to be done with care,” she said. “Things are done in a very vulgar way. And, you know, the trees are gone. No balconies. This is not urban transformation. This is rentierism.”

Urban transformation projects are being driven by rent potential in the most valuable parts of Istanbul, rather than by the areas which are most at risk, warned Haluk Eyidogan.

“Contractors cannot make money in low-income districts. They don't go districts where mainly low income people live,” he said. “So it turned into a transformation for rich people.”

There is also concern among some experts that new buildings are not necessarily all sound.

In the February earthquake, buildings constructed after 2000, some advertised as quake-resistant, collapsed. They include the high-profile Renaissance Residence building in the city of Antakya: built in the early 2010s, it collapsed sideways, leaving dozens of people dead and missing. So how do we know the same thing is not going to happen in Istanbul?

“It will happen,” said Mr Eyidogan. “It will happen.”

Other experts are more optimistic about the sturdiness of new buildings, because in the wake of disasters, municipalities better implement and enforce strict building codes.

“Every building built after 2000 is considered safer,” said Sinan Cansiz, deputy head of the Civil Engineering Department at Istanbul Arel University.

Not all buildings constructed before 2000 are targets for demolition. Those listed by Turkish authorities as “historical” – typically masonry houses built in the early 20th century – are protected and any reinforcements must be made in line with strict conservation rules.

Some public historical buildings have been reinforced by local authorities, who hope to preserve the city’s architectural fabric. They include Casa Botter, the first building of the Art Nouveau movement in Istanbul. The municipality has reinforced the brick building, on Istanbul’s Istiklal street, with metal girders to minimise the risk of damage in a future quake.

But more needs to be done.

New York skyscrapers

“Many historical buildings have been restored in Fatih, one of the historical districts of Istanbul,” Mr Cansiz said.

However, other structures, including the city’s fifth century “land walls,” which marked the limits of the city of Constantinople, are still at risk.

“It is possible that some parts of the land walls, and some historical buildings whose restoration has not been completed, will collapse in the earthquake,” he said. “These buildings need to be strengthened quickly.”

For other buildings in Istanbul, it is impossible to pinpoint just how risky they are. Most have not undergone earthquake resistance testing provided for free by the municipality. Owners are either fearful of the results, or blind to the magnitude of the risk, the officials interviewed said.

Turkish civil engineers are encouraging Istanbullites to get their buildings retrofitted to increase resistance to a future quake.

But while applications for tests in Istanbul surged after people saw the devastation wrought by last year’s quakes, many people are still reluctant to ask such questions.

People either do not want to, or cannot afford to pay for structural reinforcements to their homes, or to move out if a municipality earthquake assessment finds their property unsafe, according to the experts interviewed.

Turkey is experiencing a years-long economic crisis, with the value of the Turkish lira plummeting against the US dollar and inflation currently running at more than 70 per cent. That has impacted citizens’ spending power – including their ability to prepare their homes for a natural disaster.

“It’s mainly economical,” said Murat Yun, when asked why Istanbulites appear reluctant to get their properties tested for earthquake resistance. “The cost for building supplies and building itself has increased about 10 times since 2021. Back then, the cost of one square metre of building was 2,000 Turkish Liras. Today it's 25,000TL ($760). People are torn between the earthquake risk and their financial security.”

Last week, Istanbul’s mayor announced a package of measures to help low-income families afford the prospect of moving out of old, unsafe homes and renting elsewhere while new, theoretically safer homes are built.

But the scale of the rebuilding, and the rising costs of renting in Istanbul – the government recently removed a 25 per cent cap on rental increases, allowing landlords to increase fees in line with high inflation figures – mean that the measures may not be enough.

Back in Kadikoy district, Ms Sebnem is still waiting for her new home – the timeline for completion is two years away. She has gone into debt to cover the rent payments for temporary accommodation while her new apartment is built. She describes living in clouds of dust in a nearby rented apartment: scores of buildings in the area are being demolished as part of the slow urban transformation process.

“All the [new] buildings look the same. It's like little wannabes of New York skyscrapers, with a horrible plan, one room next to each other,” she said. “I think it's a shame, really.”

Additional reporting by Kerem Yalciner.