Will We Continue to Die in Every Earthquake in the Country of Irresponsible Authorities?

"If you want to know a country, look at how people die in that country."

Albert Camus

Managerial Responsibility Imposed by the Kahramanmaras Earthquake

Again, we lost tens of thousands of lives as a result of a natural event in which we failed to take the necessary precautions in time; hundreds of thousands were left without homes, schools and hospitals in the winter, and many more began to migrate. As is customary in such periods, there is no time for politics, and so-called "lofty" instructive arguments are used to try to normalise the disaster caused by human hands. On painful days, in the cacophony of information pollution spread by people who know and do not know the subject, who are experts and non-experts, the basic elements that create the problem are ignored and - even if not done consciously - an attempt is made to cover them up. In the light of the historical dimensions of the problem, and with the conviction that without a political scientific analysis of the problem, it will not be possible to build the future on healthy foundations, I think it is time to list -again- the solution proposals that will disturb many circles, including technical professional groups. "Horseflies" are also unpleasant and disturbing, but sometimes they may be necessary to wake up.

Political science is based on the idea that there is an imaginary "contract" agreed between the government and the society, which has "voluntarily" given up some of its freedoms in return for its protection by the government (Hobbes, 1651). The raison d'être of politics (i.e. Politics) was explained by Aristotle in ancient Greece (Politics, p. 1252b) as "with the establishment of city-states [polis] in the final stage, whereas in the beginning the aim was only to live, now living well became the aim". In other words, the principle of protecting the citizen is at the centre of politics; it is not possible to talk about the right to a good life for a citizen who cannot live. If the right to life is ignored, the "contract" between the government (the state) and the citizen becomes null and void. Such times, when the citizen's right to life is taken away because the preventable risks arising from natural phenomena are not excluded or minimised, are precisely the times when it is not only necessary, but imperative to engage in "politics". 

The executive power of this social contract, which we today call the "constitution", is exercised by politicians through the powers they receive from it. No contract can be built on "irresponsible authorisation". However, in undeveloped democracies, responsibilities before the law are reduced to responsibilities before the electorate and accountability before the law is reduced to accountability to the electorate by means of blurred and populist concepts such as "legal tutelage", "military tutelage", "architect-engineer tutelage" and so on. In this way, the politician is transformed into a de facto "irresponsible" official who exercises all executive powers and privileges based on these powers, but whose greatest accountability will be "not to be elected" again. This state of being authorised but irresponsible gradually spreads to all those who use public power, from the top to the bottom. This "sweet" system then gradually extends to all levels of society, including the professional chambers, and everyone tends to establish an order in which they will not bear any responsibility in return for having all the powers in their hands. 

Under the social contract, one of the freedoms that the citizen renounces is the freedom to put up a building "wherever he wants, however he wants". However, since the citizen has accepted the irresponsibility of the government, the government can turn a blind eye to the actions of the citizen; otherwise there is a risk of losing power. A mutually beneficial but deadly "symbiotic" vicious circle has been entered; citizens cannot be supervised while building, illegal buildings gain legitimacy, and municipalities become unable to operate even the electronic traffic control systems in cities for fear of losing votes. The rules that are violated in total are no longer "legitimately" rules, since the legitimacy of the rule is based on social acceptance. The entire cost of the order falls on a minority of "good citizens" who respect the rules.

In such a country where rulelessness has become the rule, in the aftermath of disasters, while so-called experts blame laws, regulations, etc., others assume the role of "prophecy", which the society likes very much, with ideas and predictions that are only scientifically significant as to where and when the earthquake will occur, and they do nothing but further confuse the already panic-stricken society. Advanced technical information is pumped to citizens in an uncontrolled manner. A building - unless it is built directly on a fault line - collapses for one reason: lack of supervision. What the citizen should know is not the length and depth of the faults, how many atomic bombs of energy they have, the periods of P and S waves, the amount of reinforcement required in the regulations, the acceleration of gravity, etc., but how and by which "responsible" persons the design and construction of the building is supervised. As a graduate engineer, I have never asked a question such as "according to which ground acceleration or oscillation period did you design this building?" when buying a house. Audit should be understood as a two-stage independent audit of design (project design) and implementation. Before addressing the reasons why the inspection system in Turkey is not working - although some professional chambers would object even to this (TMMOB, 2000, p. 100) - it would be useful to briefly review some of the building inspection systems that have been successfully implemented in the world. 

Building Inspection Practices in the World

First of all, it should be noted that the "social contract" and the set of rules developed in accordance with it are shaped by the cultural codes of the society from which they emerge. If you are aware of what these cultural codes are, taking the successful practices of other societies as examples can be "seminal" rather than "misleading" as TMMOB claims. Neither Japan's inspection laws based on personal "honour" or Germany's Prussian discipline, nor the technical specifications of France and Germany, which are not earthquake zones, naturally constitute examples to be applied exactly for other countries. Nevertheless, they contain many important "lessons" that can be learned when analysed correctly.

Building supervision is a two-tier system of rules in terms of scope (design and implementation) and responsibility (towards the building owner and the public), which should be supported by an insurance system. Let us now look at the functioning of the system in the world in the context of a few sample countries. Due to space limitations, I will not mention the different inspection methods of public-private buildings, but I can say that generally in all countries, the public prefers to inspect its own buildings with its own means. 

Germany Case

Under the control of strong and competent inspection bodies, the state delegates the public inspection authority to a competent engineer (Prüfingeniur) for both design and implementation. The competent engineer is awarded to engineers with 10 years of professional experience and good references in one of the four main disciplines, valid for 5 years after an independent Building Institute (Institut Für Bautechnik) examination. The competent engineer is paid by the public (Construction Directorate) and is not required to have a direct commercial relationship with the contractor or owner. The contractor, the site supervisor (on behalf of the owner), the competent engineer and the project author are each individually liable for 30 years for the building they are involved in the construction of. Although building insurance is not compulsory in the German system, due to their long-term professional liability, all components have compulsory professional liability insurance and any defects or damages to the buildings are covered by this insurance. The person responsible for inspection on behalf of the owner is the site supervisor. In the whole of Germany, only around 800 Prüfingeniur, who are recognised as competent engineers, carry out the inspection work. 

France Case

France has solved building inspection completely outside the public system, within the insurance sector. In short, it aims to provide an effective self-control structure through insurance premiums. The supervision responsibility of the public sector for a building ends with the approval of conformity with the zoning plan. Design and implementation supervision is transferred to private companies such as SOCOTEC, which has a very strong financial structure, of which there are only six in the country. Possible damages to buildings are covered by the insurers of these inspection companies. Naturally, since the insurance premiums paid by these companies will increase in direct proportion to the damages that will occur in the buildings they inspect, it is not possible for them to allow defective productions. The fees of the inspection companies are paid directly by the insurance company and no commercial relationship is allowed between them and the contractor or the owner. Insurance companies insure the inspected buildings against structural damages for 10 years with compulsory insurance. I think that this period is kept low since the earthquake risk is low. Owners can also take out a two-year voluntary insurance covering all productions. Contractor and auditor companies are secured by compulsory professional liability insurance. The competence of the working auditors is guaranteed by the company they belong to. It is clear that incompetent auditors cannot remain in the system. Since the insurance burden is very heavy, re-insurance is provided by the government (CCR).

US Case

In the USA, residential construction works are traditionally carried out by contractors selected and supervised by the project owner (Architect) who is responsible to the owner. The authority to supervise the design and execution on behalf of the public is delegated to professional engineers (PE: Professional Engineer) by City Municipal Councils (CITY). The PE title is granted for a maximum of 5 years to civil engineers with at least 4 years of experience, upon the recommendation of other professionals in the sector, if they are successful in the Basic Engineering (FE) and Professional Engineering (PE) examinations conducted by the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying (NCEES), which acts fully independently. In the American system, in order for the person who has received a civil engineering diploma to use the rights arising from this, the university he graduated from must also be accredited. The fee of the PE is paid by the owner. The responsibilities of the Contractor, Architect and PE vary according to the states and project types, but can be up to 15 years. Although not compulsory, all components have Professional Liability Insurance in order to avoid heavy damages arising from case law (common law) and any damages to buildings are compensated by this insurance.

The conclusion to be drawn from the review of the above three country systems is that an effective inspection mechanism can be established by engineers acting on behalf of the public, whose competence has been proven for a limited period of time and who are secured within the scope of professional liability insurance, without entering into direct commercial relations with contractors, and within an auto-control arising from the insurance premium system. Let us now examine why we have not been able to establish an effective building inspection system in our country in the light of historical developments. 

A Historical Overview of Building Inspection in Turkey

As a society, we do not like to think about defending our right to life before great sufferings occur. Since we forget our sufferings in a short time, it is not possible to bring permanent solutions to our problems. Engineering designs of buildings are not made in such a way that they will not be damaged at all in the biggest loads they will be exposed to, but according to the criterion of being able to withstand an acceptable damage or at least a period of time that will allow the evacuation of the people inside. Otherwise, buildings are not economically feasible.  

In Turkey, earthquake regulations were prepared for the first time in 1947, after the Erzincan earthquake disaster in 1939.  In our country, earthquake regulations have been revised 7 times in total, in 1947, 1953, 1961, 1968, 1968, 1975, 1998, 2007 and 2018 (still in force). In each revision, the acceptable damage level has been reduced, and the calculation loads to which the buildings will be exposed have been increased, aiming to make them less affected by possible earthquakes. As an engineer who observed the 1992 Erzincan (6.8) and 1999 Gölcük (7.8) earthquakes on site, I can say that I witnessed that many buildings built according to the 1975 regulations survived without damage. With the 1998 and 2018 regulations prepared as a result of much more competent scientific studies, scientific progress was reflected in building construction methods. The last regulation was updated as a result of 8 workshops with 110 sub-working group members. I can easily state that it will be extremely difficult to find a building that has been severely damaged as a result of an earthquake, even if the earthquake regulations of 1975 and later are fully complied with. To say that the regulations prepared as a result of such meticulous and intensive studies are "inadequate" and that we should copy the technical regulations from another country is both a denial of science and a failure to comprehend the issue. However, the basis of the problem is based on the failure to establish an effective mechanism to supervise the projects and implementation according to the requirements of technical regulations. 

Supervision mechanisms were first introduced through the fenni mesul (later Technical Implementation Supervisor -TUS) added to the zoning law no. 3194 dated 1985. Since the fenni masters, who were obliged to carry out inspections on behalf of the administration and the building owner, were caught between the conflicts of interest arising from the fact that the wages were so low that they could not even cover the costs and that the (first) owner and the contractor were the same person in the build-and-sell works, the practice soon turned into a formality and paperwork. Even after the 1992 Erzincan and 1999 Gölcük earthquakes, the fact that there are no convicted fnancial officers, who should have been fully authorised, is a proof in itself of the dysfunctionality of the system. According to the relevant law, only administrative fines are imposed on "...the building or parcel owner, map, plan, survey and project authors, fnancial supervisors, building contractor and construction site supervisor who fail to fulfil the specified obligations...". In this way, a de facto state of "no sanctions" was introduced with sanctions that were distributed to many people and whose implementation was only possible "upon proof" according to the Law of Obligations, and the Administration was already exempted from all kinds of sanctions. Citizens continued to pay the price of the irresponsible authorisation system. 

Studies on a modern building inspection system based on insurance and financial responsibility, which started in the 1990s with the initiatives of İMO and İntes (Employers' Union of Construction Industrialists of Turkey), made considerable progress after the 1992 Erzincan earthquake (Karaesmen, 1992), and the studies carried out especially at METU were presented to the participants at the Advisory Board Meeting held on 27 July 1999, but the ministry officials did not attend both this meeting and the final report meeting held on 10 August 1999 on the grounds that they were "busy" (Gülkan, 2001). With the shock of the earthquakes in Gölcük on 17 August 1999 and Düzce on the following 17 August 1999, these studies were attempted to be implemented, albeit partially, with the Decree Laws No. 595 dated 10 April 2000 and No. 601 dated 28 June 2000. 

With the Decree Law No. 595, the project engineers who designed the structural systems of the buildings were to be supervised by their colleagues with the status of "expert" for the first time, the entire implementation was to be supervised by the building supervision organisation, which would be deemed perfectly responsible, and again by the expert engineer, and the supervision organisation was to compensate the damages, including those caused by natural disasters, for a period of 10 years, and the service fee, which would vary between 4-8% of the project cost, was to be collected from the building owner, while the municipality was to pay the supervision organisation, thus breaking the commercial bond between them. The 10-year indemnity obligation was to be secured by a professional liability insurance to be taken out by the inspection organisation for the same period. Provincial and District Building Inspection Commissions were also established to alleviate the political pressure that citizens would have wanted to exert on municipalities. With the Decree Law No. 601 issued after this Decree Law, the definition of "expert engineer" and "expert architect" was also made, and the conditions of having 5 years of professional experience in the relevant profession alongside expert engineers and architects, attending the trainings to be organised by the professional chambers, and being successful in the exam to be held jointly by the chambers of angels, ministries and YÖK were introduced. When all these were considered together, the main framework of an inspection system similar to the good examples in the world was established. 

However, firstly, since the insurance system was distant from the concept of professional liability insurance and could not assess the risks correctly, the implementation of this article was postponed and the whole system was left lame.  Then, this autonomous and private sector-based structure created unrest among the professional chambers affiliated to TMMOB. TMMOB's uneasiness, which started with the World Bank loan given to METU Earthquake Engineering Research Centre in 1997, and which resulted from the realisation of the idea of assigning inspection to the private sector, came to the surface (TMMOB, 2000, p. 98). However, the authority of supervision had been delegated to the public sector through fenni mesulları since the Zoning Law No. 3194. As a result of the pressure exerted by the chambers on the then main opposition Virtue Party, the Virtue Party, on the grounds that the service fee introduced by Decree 595 was high, that it was a system based on rent, that it would be considered "denial of the profession" (Gülkan, 2001), especially architecture, since it prioritised civil engineers, and that it was unconstitutional since it required the public to delegate the duty of supervision, Decree 595 was cancelled with the application made to the Constitutional Court; and its complementary Decree 601, which defined "expertise", was also rendered inoperative. This cancellation decision was fervently celebrated by the Chamber of Architects, the Chamber of Geological Engineers and other components of TMMOB (except İMO).  The political view with which the professional chambers collaborated that day would celebrate this situation in 2013 with the title "Architect and engineer tutelage is over" (Yeni Şafak 11.07.2013) when almost all the supervisory powers of TMMOB were pruned.

When the Decree Laws were cancelled upon the objections of the professional chambers, the government, without wasting time and without consulting either the professional chambers or the universities, enacted the Building Inspection Law No. 4708 in an omnibus law on 29 June. With this law, the positive changes introduced by the Decree Law No. 595 were also abolished. Provincial and District Building Inspection Commissions were abolished, making municipal inspections open to political pressure again, the inspection fee was reduced to 3%, the responsibilities of the inspection bodies were expanded to include OHS conditions, and the non-functioning TUS system was re-established, this time under the name of a company. While the requirement to have professional liability insurance was abolished and financial security was destroyed, the concepts of expert and competent architect-engineer evaporated. When the issuance of auditor architect and engineer certificates was left to the Ministry of Public Works and Settlement, excluding the professional chambers, "expertise" was also politicised. Although the period of responsibility for the load-bearing system was increased from 10 years to 15 years, the responsibility was again spread over a wide area such as the project author, supervising architect/engineer, contractor, material laboratories, and in fact dysfunctionalised; from whom, at what rate and against which counter-guarantee could the material damages be compensated?  In short, we are back to square one. 

Is a Solution Possible?

In a country where 50% of its territory, 60% of its population, 74% of its major industrial centres, and 30% of its dams are located in very risky earthquake zones (Güleş, 2019), it is obvious that a construction process that is unattended and far from effective supervision is no longer sustainable. In my opinion, the establishment of an effective supervision mechanism is only possible by bringing together the following elements.

- It should be accepted that the local and central administrations, neither in terms of the quality nor the number of staff, can supervise an average of 106 thousand building licences (corresponding to an average annual construction area of 137 million m2 according to TURKSTAT 2002-2021 data) and as many occupancy permits (settlement) issued annually throughout the country, neither in terms of project nor implementation, and the supervision authority should be transferred to the private sector under the control of local administrations. In Istanbul alone, approximately ten thousand licences and ten thousand occupancy permits were issued in 2022, which corresponds to an average of 67 vital documents per day. 

- Inspection institutions should be no more than 10 in number throughout the country, with a very strong financial structure (as in France), authorised only for inspection work, and accredited by professional chambers and universities free from political pressure. 

- The competent architect/engineer system should be brought back, and the inspection organisation should employ a certain number of experts for each building it inspects. This title should be granted for a period of 5 years after an exam to be conducted by a board to be formed between the relevant professional chamber and universities, and professional chambers should make periodical trainings compulsory. "Building supervision" courses covering administrative and technical issues should be added to the curricula of civil engineering and architecture departments of universities. 

- Inspection organisations should be subject to compulsory professional liability insurance, and it should be ensured that each building they undertake the inspection of is covered for at least 15 years from the date of occupancy permit. The insurance system should be structured in such a way that it can provide such insurances.

- TCIP system should be transformed into a real insurance based on risk analysis and re-insurable. TCIP should be responsible to the owners and should compensate their damages from the Professional Liability Insurances to be taken out by inspection organisations and contractors. In this way, the premiums to be paid by audit institutions will vary depending on the quality of service they provide, and autocontrol will be ensured.

- All responsibility should be borne jointly by the contractor and the inspection organisation, since the project author will also be supervised by the inspection organisation. Diffusion and distribution of responsibility should be prevented. For this reason, contractors should also be included in the scope of professional liability insurance and their premiums should be determined according to the competence criteria to be determined by the insurance company.

- Payments to inspection bodies should be made from the licence and settlement fees to be collected by local governments from the owners, and these organisations should be kept away from any kind of political, social, contractor or owner pressure, and the commercial link between the inspector and the inspected should be severed.

Every destruction offers an important opportunity for reconstruction for those who can learn from it. For those who cannot learn lessons, the laws of natural selection continue to operate. 

References

Aristotle (2018). Politika (4th b.). (A. Cevizci, Translation.) Istanbul: Say.

Bayraktar, S. (2001). Building Inspection Practices in the World and Development Process in Turkey. ITU Institute of Science and Technology Master's Thesis. Istanbul.

Güleş, M. (2019). Problems and Solution Suggestions on the Implementation of the Law No. 4708 on Building Inspection. KTO Karatay University Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences Master's Thesis. Konya.

Gülkan, P. (2001/2). An Essay on the Cancellation of the Decree Law No. 595 on Building Inspection and the Subsequent Building Inspection Law No. 4708. TMH- Turkey Engineering News, 412, pp. 7-19.

Hobbes, T. (1651). Leviathan (1st ed.). Paris: Andrew Crooke.

Karacaoğlu, Ö. (2005). Building Inspection Systems and Insurance Practices in the World and Turkey. Marmara University Banking and Insurance Institute Master's Thesis. Istanbul.

Karaesmen, E. (1992, June). Building Inspection-Responsibility and Insurance in the Light of Erzincan Earthquake. 13 March 1992 Erzincan Earthquake Engineering Report, 77-92. Ankara: İMO.

TMMOB. (2000). East Marmara Earthquakes and the Reality of Turkey. Ankara: TMMOB.