Post-disaster reconstruction, demolition and debris removal, rehabilitation, and other recovery processes in Kahramanmaraş are currently interwoven. The authorities responsible for urban governance often experience difficulties in setting priorities, tending to favor short-term and highly visible projects while neglecting fundamental and structural problems. Local administrators, who are already grappling with the chronic problems of the city, now face additional post-disaster challenges and suffer from shortcomings in merit-based management and institutional responsibility. Although new residential and public buildings are being constructed to replace those that collapsed, far more comprehensive measures are required to ensure the city’s long-term livability and resilience. My post-earthquake observations, along with solution-oriented suggestions, can be summarized under the following headings.
Governance and Coordination
The disaster resilience literature emphasizes that post-disaster reconstruction is not merely a physical process but a multidimensional one that also encompasses planning, governance, and policymaking. In disaster-affected urban and rural areas, strong inter-institutional communication and cooperation are critical both for reducing disaster impacts and for managing potential future risks. In Kahramanmaraş -the epicenter of the 2023 earthquakes- nearly three years after the disaster, no joint initiative, commission, or coordinated effort has been established to reduce existing disaster impacts or the risks of future events, nor to prepare a new Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction Plan (İRAP).
Concrete steps must be taken in this direction. A governance and coordination plan should be developed, inspired by cities that have rebuilt more resiliently after disasters. In order to mitigate disaster impacts, the municipality, governorship, universities, the Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency of Türkiye (AFAD), the Turkish Red Crescent, and civil society and non-governmental organizations should collaboratively define a shared roadmap. As emphasized in Türkiye’s Disaster Risk Reduction Plan (TARAP), this roadmap must be grounded in the principle of Build Back Better. The report prepared through the collaboration between the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and the Kahramanmaraş Metropolitan Municipality -focusing on local disaster risk reduction and disaster waste management- also provides meaningful guidance. However, it is likely that the municipality alone possesses sufficient capacity to ensure renewal and modernization across all sectors. This clearly highlights the necessity of a governance approach supported by inter-institutional cooperation.
Expert commissions composed of competent professionals should be formed within categories such as urban planning and architecture, structural resilience, sustainable environment, transportation networks, public spaces, and cultural and artistic facilities. These commissions should set goals and produce targeted projects aligned with these objectives.
Urban Planning and Reconstruction
After the earthquake, we had an opportunity to construct a better city. By learning from successful practices in neighbouring provinces, long-standing problems in the city center such as transportation, traffic, and social infrastructure could have been addressed. The only step taken, which was out of necessity, was related to the domestic water infrastructure. With a 70% water loss rate, the existing system had already become dysfunctional.
However, three years later, many neighbourhoods in Kahramanmaraş face the risk of becoming slums or deteriorating into marginalized outskirts. Site selections for post-disaster housing have been widely criticized by residents concerned about the city’s long-term development. Observations indicate that inhabitants of disaster housing units have been pushed to peripheral areas, far removed from urban life, and deprived of adequate social and service infrastructure to meet their basic needs. This is fundamentally an urban planning problem and must be addressed comprehensively.
From a broader perspective, the post-earthquake reconstruction process in Kahramanmaraş can be summarized as follows: at present, the most profitable occupation in the city is contracting. During demolition works, demolition companies frequently damage municipal roads, yet the costs of repairing this damage are not recovered from contractors. When such issues are raised, the discussion is often quickly diverted to the general state of the national economy.
Many contractors in the housing sector operate with the mindset: “The earthquake happened and is now over; nothing like this will occur again for centuries.” Projects with fundamental design deficiencies are approved by municipalities, technically improper construction practices are carried out, contractors are left unchecked, and their wrongdoings remain unpunished. With no deterrent consequences, construction activities proceed in a disorderly manner. Consequently, many of the buildings reconstructed in Kahramanmaraş are subject to no more engineering oversight than the buildings that collapsed. At this point, it is difficult not to call upon public authorities to fulfill their responsibilities. Yet the more pressing question remains: is it truly possible today to reach the authority responsible?
Cultural Issues and Urban Memory
Just a few months ago, alternative news channels and social media reported that a historic building, one that had survived the earthquake, was demolished by heavy machinery. The announcement that the Necip Fazıl Kısakürek Cultural Center, a symbolic cultural landmark that had also survived the disaster, was slated for demolition generated public outcry. Such interventions carry a strong symbolic meaning, amounting to the erasure of collective memory, and therefore lack a reasonable justification.
The number and capacity of cultural activities in the city should be increased, while existing cultural buildings must be preserved and new ones developed. Making a city resilient, sustainable, and livable does not mean demolishing structures that survived the earthquake and replacing them with new ones devoid of cultural significance. Instead, a new cultural center, new meetings, conventions, and exhibition halls should be constructed structures that hold artistic value and contribute to the cultural identity of the city. Because in Kahramanmaraş, there are many buildings, but no true “works of art.”
As a conclusion, achieving a genuine Build Back Better outcome for Kahramanmaraş requires moving beyond rapid physical reconstruction toward an integrated, accountable, and forward-looking transformation that simultaneously strengthens governance, urban planning, engineering practice, and the preservation of urban memory.
A. Emre CENGİZ
Assistant Professor, Dr.
KSÜ Department of Civil Engineering,
Head of Construction Management Division
E-mail: aemrecengiz [at] ksu.edu.tr (aemrecengiz[at]ksu[dot]edu[dot]tr)
Phone: +90 344 300 1663