The events date back to February 2023, when the country was hit by several earthquakes, and the defendants, already remanded in custody, were found guilty of the unsafe construction of a 12-story block of apartments in the city of Diyarbakir.

The earthquake killed some 53,000 people in a huge region in the southeast of the country.

Some experts think that the complex was built on soil that was extremely soft, unsuitable for buildings of this size, Turkish media reported.

A month earlier, another court sentenced a contractor to 18 years in prison for the collapse of a building in the city of Sanliurfa during the same earthquake. he was held responsible for serious material faults in the construction.

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