Earthquakes in southeastern Turkey that destroyed cities and killed 44,000 people have prompted authorities to look again at how the quake-prone nation might cope with a similar tremor in Turkey's densely populated, northwestern industrial heartland.
"This is industrial centre. Destruction of that magnitude here could have much graver consequences that could lead to the country's destruction," said Bugra Gokce, deputy secretary-general of the opposition-run Istanbul municipality.
President Tayyip Erdogan's two decade rule has been defined by a construction boom. He is now expected to face his biggest ever political challenge in those votes and has pledged a swift campaign to rebuild tens of thousands of homes after more than 180,000 buildings were destroyed in the latest quakes.
Experts say attention needs to be focused once again on Istanbul's readiness for a major quake, something that has been a matter of public debate periodically since the 1999 disaster. Since 1999, Istanbul has undergone a rapid wave of urbanisation, much of it under Erdogan's rule. In 2018, the government introduced a so-called zoning amnesty across Turkey to legalise unregistered construction work, which engineers and architects warned could endanger lives.
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