Six former public officials from the southeastern Turkish city of Adiyaman were on Thursday indicted for “causing death through negligence”, based on their role in the sequence of events which led to the collapse of the city’s Isias hotel, which killed 72 people, 35 of whom were Cypriots.

The hotel collapsed during the first of two powerful earthquakes which hit the southeast of Turkey on February 6, 2023.

According to Turkey’s Anka news agency, the six indictees include former deputy mayor Osman Bulut, with criminal investigations into the conduct of public officials who were serving when the hotel’s owners were filing applications for various construction and change of use permits over the years having been launched last May.

It had been found that permits had been given to the Isias hotel which did not comply with the relevant laws, and that information written on permits did not match the work which had been carried out at the hotel.

Rusen Karakaya, whose daughter Selin was among the 24 Cypriot children killed when the hotel collapsed, welcomed the indictment.

“They finally filed the indictment for which we have been waiting for months. Public officials will also be tried. The ignorant mentalities and incompetent people who took my child, our children, and our loved ones from us will be the end of these people,” she said.

Bulut, however, was quick to defend himself, saying that he had “no technical knowledge” and that he therefore could not be held liable for the hotel’s collapse.

“I was a history teacher. As far as I remember, I started working as Adiyaman’s deputy mayor in 1994. Before I started there, the rough construction of the Isias hotel had already been completed,” he said.

He added that at some point during his tenure as deputy mayor, the building’s construction licence had come up for renewal, that the technical officials inside the Adiyaman municipality had “explained the situation”, and that he had then signed the renewal.

“I did not know the technical details due to my profession. I did not know the technical content of the file. Since I thought it was formally compliant with the legislation as an administrative transaction, I signed it as I saw it. There is no negligence on my part, and I do not accept the accusation,” he said.

All five other indictees also deny the charges against them.

The indictment comes just a week after the second anniversary of the earthquakes which predicated the hotel’s collapse, with emotions having still been raw at the ceremony in Famagusta where the 35 who died in the Isias hotel were buried.

Karakaya had said on the anniversary that while two years have passed since the earthquakes, “for us, time stopped on the morning of that dark day”.

“What hurts us most is knowing that this loss was not fate. Our champion angels fell victim not only to an earthquake, but to a disaster created by human hands, to negligence, to greed and to heartlessness. A building collapsed into a pile of sand in 16 seconds,” she had said.

In December, six other people, including the hotel’s owner and architect, were found guilty of causing death by conscious negligence leading to the building’s collapse. However, it is expected that the families of the dead will appeal the ruling to demand that charges of intentionally killing the victims be brought.