More than 340 people have been arrested in Turkey for looting and construction defects

As Kommersant reports, citing local media data, 564 people were suspected of violating building codes during the construction of houses, 160 of them have already been arrested, and the rest have been put on the wanted list.

"282 people are suspected of looting. 181 of them were arrested", - the message reads.

Investigations are being carried out on the territory of 11 Turkish provinces.

Earlier it was reported that on February 6 and 20, a series of devastating earthquakes with a magnitude of up to 7.8 points occurred in Turkey. Their victims were 42.3 thousand people. About 42,000 buildings were destroyed, hundreds of thousands of people were left homeless.

After the tragedy, it became clear that the authorities of the country repeatedly declared "building amnesties", allowing for money to put into operation houses erected with violations of construction standards, including in earthquake—prone areas.

The only exception was the city of Erzin, on the territory of which the principled mayor Okkesh Elmasoglu did not allow anyone, even his relatives, to build a single building without a license. As a result, not a single house collapsed and not a single resident died in the 42-thousand-year-old Erzin, which fell into the epicenter of earthquakes. The mayor became a national hero, and the position of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who promoted the construction amnesty, was dramatically shaken.

After the events in Turkey, Russian builders appealed to the authorities with a demand to return state control of concrete and building mixes, up to 25% of which turned out to be fake on the market, fraught with provoking the collapse of buildings built from such materials.