Calls grow for hotel collapse case to be taken to ECtHR

Calls grew on Wednesday for the case regarding the collapse of the Isias hotel in the southeastern Turkish city of Adiyaman, which killed 72 people, including 35 Cypriots, to be taken to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) after a court in Adiyaman freed six former public officials who were on trial for their role in the collapse on Monday.

Opposition Turkish Cypriot political party CTP ‘MP’ Sifa Colakoglu on Wednesday told Kibris Postasi TV that she believed that when appeals are lodged, the trials of the six former public officials and the six others, including the hotel’s owner Ahmet Bozkurt and architect Erdem Yilmaz, who were found guilty in 2024, should be “consolidated” into a single trial.

This, she said, is because having all the defendants stand trial at the same time “could reveal the relationships between public officials and technical supervisors” and thus “increase the likelihood” of the charges brought against the owner, his family, and contractors being upgraded.

In 2024, those six were found guilty of causing death by conscious negligence, while the families believe that all 12 should be convicted of causing death by probable intent.

On this matter, Colakoglu said she “cannot understand why this relationship was not investigated”, and said that the Cypriots at the Adiyaman court had requested that the cases be consolidated into one but had their request denied.

Now, she said, “we expect decisions which will ensure that public officials sign such documents a thousand times more consciously in the future”.

“Seventy-two lives were lost in a single building due to a single signature. There are thousands of such buildings,” she said.

She added that, if necessary, the case could be taken to the ECtHR, and that this will be the course the families of the victims take “if it is determined that the trial was not conducted fairly”.

In any case, she said, “we will follow these cases to the very end”.

“The suffering experienced by the families has not ended. They cannot return to their lives when they return to their homes,” she said, before calling on every Turkish Cypriot to “follow this case, no matter how far it goes”.

“The release of the public officials in the Isias case undermined trust. If it is determined that the trial was not conducted fairly, the process will be taken to the European Court of Human Rights,” she said.

Meanwhile on Wednesday, Pervin Aksoy Ipekcioglu, whose daughter Serin was among those killed at the Isias hotel, was the latest to express her disgust at Monday’s ruling, saying that “our motherland’s courts told me, ‘you were guilty for sending her, I condemn you to a lifetime of her absence without justice being secured’”.

“Now, those responsible get to go home, and I go home without her. Only one word crossed my mind: disgrace … Then, I looked around. Those who sent us were there for the show, but they were absent when the verdict was announced, to avoid making eye contact with the system to which they were grateful,” she said.

She added that she does not forgive the judges who made Monday’s ruling, and said, “may every breath taken by every immoral person they allowed to live free through those decisions be forbidden to them”.

Calls for the case to be taken to the ECtHR first came from former Turkish Cypriot chief negotiator Kudret Ozersay, who said on Tuesday that it is “highly likely” that if no court in Turkey will grant the families’ demand, the case will be taken to the Strasbourg court.

He said the possibility of a conviction for causing death by possible intent was “deliberately ignored” by the Adiyaman court, and said that “the principles of a fair trial in these criminal proceedings are also seriously questionable”.

“The children who lost their lives have become symbols for the Turkish Cypriot community. These events created a collective trauma. This pain is etched not only into the memory of the families, but into the collective memory of the entire community,” he said.

Monday’s ruling had seen three of the six public officials – former Adiyaman deputy mayor Osman Bulut, civil engineer Bilal Balci, and former Adiyaman town planning director Mehmet Salih Alkayis – handed suspended 10-year prison sentences and then released on bail conditions.

The three other defendants, former Adiyaman town planning director, building auditor Abdurrahman Karaarslan, and technician Fazli Karakus were all acquitted of all charges and as such freed.