Erdoğan ally Bahçeli wishes people 'didn't prefer to live in risky buildings'

Photo: AA

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Political parties held their first parliamentary group meetings following Friday's (October 30) magnitude 6.9 earthquake in the western İzmir province, where more than 100 people lost their lives.

Devlet Bahçeli, the chair of Turkey's Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and an ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, told his party's parliamentary group that "We should be prepared for a possible earthquake in İstanbul."

Bahçeli said Turkey, which is crossed by fault lines and is prone to earthquakes, should learn to live with foreshocks.

"It is obligatory upon us to make plans based on the possibility of earthquakes," he said.

Noting that the earthquake was another "disaster" in 2020, Bahçeli said he wished people didn't prefer to live in risky buildings in order to "have a couple square meters more share."

He said that "a timely reaction" should have been shown against those who used less iron and concrete in buildings for more profit.

In 1999, a magnitude-7.4 tremor hit the industrial province of Kocaeli, leaving nearly 18,000 people dead and around 45,000 others injured.

Nearly 16 million people were affected, and around 200,000 people left homeless.

The MHP leader extended condolences to the affected families, saying the aggrieved paid a heavy price as "concrete blocks collapsed on the innocent."

"It is unreasonable to be silent on a disaster waiting to happen," he said. (AS/VK)