Keywords

1 Introduction

Today’s international agenda on disaster risk management has promoted activities that contribute to disaster risk reduction (DRR ) which mainly concentrates on precautions before a disaster event in order to decrease the size and amount of activities that are expected to occur afterwards. Countries across the world consider and have already started to reformulate their disaster strategies to implement the concept of DRR, which has been under monitoring through the National Progress Reports on implementation of Frameworks for Action since 2005 for every 15-year span. In order to achieve substantial reduction of disaster risk and losses in lives and livelihoods, economic, physical, social, cultural and environmental assets of persons, businesses, communities and countries until 2030 four priorities for action were declared in Sendai, Japan, in 2015. These priorities for action are: (i) understanding disaster risk; (ii) strengthening disaster risk governance to manage disaster risk; (iii) investing in disaster reduction for resilience; and (iv) enhancing disaster preparedness for effective response and to build back better in recovery, rehabilitation and reconstruction (UNISDR 2018).

Turkey has a very long and sore history on disaster events since it is geographically located on shaky grounds. Earthquakes have taken the lead as being the most effective disaster that threatens human and property losses, while other natural hazards like river floods and landslides have also been frequently influencing settlements. Beginning with 1950s’ rapid migration to urban areas, most of Turkey’s highly populated settlements have gradually agglomerated and built up on hazardous areas with highly vulnerable building stock and until very recently, prevailing disaster management approach has not been focusing on disaster risk mitigation. Consequently, current settlements with such inherited circumstances have faced a challenge of highly populated built-up space that requires rational urban planning strategies that need to be guided by disaster risk management perspective. However, it should be noted that it is highly complicated to implement such planning strategies since prevailing political power that has been benefitting from several amnesty laws for illegal buildings and squatters all along. It is noticed that such cases of amnesty laws have been enacted just before elections in order to get higher votes from beneficiaries of such illegal settlements. However, the consequences of such kind of legalization processes of unauthorized developments have considerable effects on the creation of today’s vulnerable cities.

Turkey had made essential changes in its legal and organizational system and registered progress in several areas related disaster management since the 1999 Marmara Earthquakes whose human and property losses were devastating in dense urban areas. However, it is recently observed that Turkey’s cities and urban areas do not fully concentrate on implementing DRR actions that have led to increase disaster resiliencies. The Van-Tabanlı Earthquake (Mw 7.2) in Eastern Turkey that happened on 23 October 2011 has pointed out this claim once again. The Chambers of Architects (2011) and several research groups conclude that most of the collapsed buildings in Erciş, a district in Van Province, were constructed after 1990. Besides, in the district centre only 500 buildings were found as having living permit. Of those buildings, 30% had architect consultancy, and 70% had either technician or engineering consultancy. The district of Erciş was the most heavily destructed with 30% of its buildings damaged beyond repair. As of June 2012 report of International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (hereafter IFRC) over 69,450 buildings were examined across the province, of which 2900 (4%) have totally collapsed, 25,750 (37%) severely damaged (inhabitable), 40,800 (59%) slightly or moderately damaged (eligible for accommodation).

Although Turkey has been a disaster-prone country for centuries, with its disaster culture, awareness and administration, it has not yet fully upgraded from conventional approach that overemphasizes response activities rather than focusing on risk reduction and mitigation activities. According to a very well-known international database, Emergency Events Database (hereafter EM-DAT), since the year 1900, a total of 162 natural events causing nearly 93,000 casualties in Turkey have been recorded as disasters, first three types are shared by earthquakes, floods and mass movements (Table 12.1). Based on the national databases (Gökçe and others 2008), on the other hand, the most frequent disaster event was landslides (mass movements), followed by earthquakes and floods (Fig. 12.1) between 1955 and 2008.

Table 12.1 Disaster profile of Turkey (1900–2018) (Prepared by the author based on EM-DAT 2018)
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Fig. 12.1
figure 1

(Reproduced by the author based on Gökçe and others 2008, 11)

Distribution of disaster events in Turkey by types (1955–2008).

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It is due to geographical, geomorphological and geological conditions that Turkey and its vicinity throughout centuries have been experiencing several disastrous earthquakes causing the highest number of casualties and financial losses compared to the other types of natural hazards . According to recent Earthquake Hazard Map of Turkey (2018Footnote 1), it is found that 25.7% of total buildings and 27% of total population in Turkey are located on the highest seismic (dark red) zone whose peak ground accelerationFootnote 2 (PGA) is  >=0.4 g (Fig. 12.2).

Fig. 12.2
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Earthquake hazard map of Turkey [English version of the image is produced by the author.] (AFAD 2018)

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Turkey, although having such a large share of seismically hazardous areas, a large portion of its building stock do not comply with neither the structural/seismic codes that were effective at the time of their construction, nor the ever more strict modern seismic codes enforced today. In reality, it is often accepted by government officials that half to three quarters of existing buildings in Turkey lack the design documents and permits required for their construction. Referred to as illegal construction, they are generally constructed with poor materials and workmanship due to insufficient or no supervision or inspections during construction processes (Güneş 2015).

For instance, in the case of the latest earthquake in Van in 2011, it is observed that in several instances, most of buildings, which had no engineering consultancy during construction process and had several non-engineered major modifications on ground floors, as well as adding extra floors in years, caused collapses and human casualties. Similarly, previous development plans that directed the development rights to individuals had ignored ground conditions. This decision was also followed by the decision about building floor/height increase in the city centre due to abrupt population boost that was caused by compulsory migration from surrounding rural areas in the 10 years after 1990. There were also illegal developments observed on lands outside the city and development plan coverage (Keskinok 2009). However, with the limited amount of studies conducted on Van City and its highly affected district centres, the true reasons behind the collapse of buildings, severe damages resulting in the loss of 604 lives, 4152 people injured after such an earthquake are not certain (CEDIMFootnote 3 2011).

After the experience of the tragedies in Van, 12 years after Marmara Earthquakes in 1999, the officials have changed their focus to take action on the seismic deficiency of the existing building stock. Right after the earthquake, a massive initiative was declared and six months later in 2012, the Law No: 6306, transformation of areas under disaster risk, often known as the Urban Transformation Law, was approved by the Parliament to be implemented by the Ministry of Environment and Urbanization. “It is estimated that about one-third of the nearly 20 million occupancy units in Turkey has insufficient seismic resistance and need retrofitting or renewal …The cost of urban transformation is roughly estimated as $500 billion, and the time to completion is ambitiously set as 20 years” (Güneş 2015, 20).

Under such conditions today, major questions and challenges that cities in Turkey have been confronted with can be categorized as follows:

  • As being one of risk reduction activities: many cities have currently been experiencing urban transformations for almost 6 years by complying with the Law No. 6306. Having a large amount of vulnerable building stock either on hazardous areas or not, the question at hand is, how do we manage to create disaster safe living environments by the help of decisions among the choices of retrofitting , renewal and regeneration /transformation guided by the Law? Do such implementations of the Law work well?

  • Challenge 1: new urban spaces that were created by the guidance and force of the Law should empirically be analysed at local conditions in order to find out whether those spaces can create disaster safe areas. There is a need for an assessment about rebuilt areas in order to determine whether they are disaster/earthquake resistant or not.

  • In most of the cases in accordance with the Law, urban transformation processes on seismic risk areas and reconstruction activities of risky buildings have been decided rather than retrofitting . Although transformed areas and reconstructed buildings claim to have necessary standards, do they also create sustainable living environments that would contribute to resilient settlements/cities as a whole?

  • Challenge 2: such incremental changes in urban areas should be analysed in order to monitor the effects of such new developments that might be costly on cities since there is no comprehensive planning about urban transformation projects.

  • Prevailing approach of disaster management in Turkey’s administrative framework has focused on the activities that leave the urban planning discipline and participatory practices out for a long time. Since it is crucial to be focused on activities that require intervention/planning and collaboration from all stakeholders before any disaster comes to existence, but how can such a framework be reformed?

  • Challenge 3: it is said that 1999 was a turning point for restructuring the administrative framework regarding disaster management since investing more on risk reduction activities that are necessary to be implemented before any disaster event hits is the idea to be embraced. However, this idea has not yet been fully embraced by all the stakeholders as proven by losses in recent disaster events.

These questions and challenges will be elaborated throughout this chapter for the benefit of researchers from several disciplines who would find it interesting so that it might deserve further empirical studies that are very limited at present. Prior to that, it is quite necessary and informative to share a review of urbanization processes and legislative changes that have effects on current urban risks.

2 Review of Urbanization Processes, Legislative Changes and Effects on Current Urban Risks

Due to industrialization and population increase in urban areas in Turkey, especially after the 1950s, rapid urbanization was observed because of high flows of rural population to urban areas where plenty of job opportunities and better living conditions created high attraction. The year of 1985 was the turning point when urban population exceeded rural population, and as of 2016 urban population rate stood at 78% (ÇŞB 2014, TURKSTAT 2018). A series of comprehensive changes regarding economic, cultural and institutional features of cities has been experienced as an outcome of this rapid population increase. Today’s cities of Turkey have basically been formed by these urbanization process the main features of which were established by such changes (Balamir 1996).

Since neither the State nor the housing market effectively responded to the rapid needs in housing and public facilities of the increasing population in urban areas after the 1950s, formal production processes of housing did not meet sheltering as the basic need of migrants. Instead, squatters and unauthorized developments came out as a dominant type of low-income housing under these circumstances creating almost one of the main features of Turkey’s cities. According to Tekeli (1996), during that period, the State had to decide on the distribution of limited resources among main sectors, such as industry and housing. In order to accelerate development, the State invested more on industrialization while housing policies were inefficiently handled. Therefore, the squatters that provided cheap labour were established around industrial areas that were attached to cities where electrical power was only generated in 1950s. Then rapid expansion of illegal housing was observed due to attitude of the State towards low-income housing in the field of urbanization particularly during 1960s and 1970s. It is also claimed that the reason behind the incapability of local and central authorities of guiding and providing housing developments was the scarcity of resources at that time (Balamir 2002). On the other hand, the absence of a formal State led policy on low-income housing might be the main reason for the expansion of squatter housing (Buğra 1998).

It is observed that Turkish cities have undergone major transformations that were performed by joint efforts of the various sections of urban residents. At this point, it is quite crucial to explain several property relations that resulted in these transformations in the urban areas as claimed by Balamir (1992, 1996 and 2002). According to him, the property relations that emerged in order to overcome capital scarcities have been very effective at accelerating and broadening the entire urbanization process.

These relations can be listed as follows (Balamir 1992):

  1. 1.

    “process of appropriation ”

  2. 2.

    “process of apportionment (shared ownership)”

  3. 3.

    “process of appurtenance ”.

The first two relates to construction and transformation of squatters and unauthorized settlements. Process of appropriation refers to the initial step of squatter development, which is defined by invasion process of mostly vacant public lands. In other words, those lands are occupied illegally in a very short time. The second type, process apportionment , which is believed to be a triggering factor for every type of unauthorized development in Turkey, is defined as being an informal shared ownership that embraces the subdivision and sale of cadastral and agricultural lands to unauthorized builders (Balamir 1996 and 2002).

In Turkey’s legislation, appropriation is entirely an illegal process, whereas process of apportionment has some lawful steps. The land acquisition and construction steps within the process of appropriation are both illegal and irregular. On the other hand, acquisition of land as a share of large cadastral land in the process of apportionment was not an illegal step, whereas the construction activity itself has been an illegal one (Balamir 1996). However, these two types of property relations behind the development of squatters gained regular or semi-legal status eventually under the tolerance of the State of Turkey. Several amnesty laws that were enacted by the governmentFootnote 4 have transformed those squatter owners as legal occupiers who eventually got their title deeds or certificates. Starting from the capital city Ankara in 1948, several amnesty laws have been affecting all other cities of Turkey in consecutive years. The trend seems to continue because political parties have used such laws and regulations during general or local elections as one of the main strategies to be elected by some groups of voters who are living within illegal built-up areas. Table 12.2 illustrates these kind of amnesty relation that have been used from 1946–2018 to legalize ownership and settlement rights without proper urban planning and minimum construction standards that are necessary for the authorization procedures for living in such urban environments.

Table 12.2 Chronology of elections and Amnesty Laws for illegal, low-income buildings and squatters in Turkey (Prepared by the author based on TMMOB-ŞPO 2002; Torlak 2003; Duyar-Kienast 2005; YSK 2018; Resmi Gazete 2018)
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Squatters are regarded as an enrichment tool for those who occupy public lands. Amnesty laws as shown in Table 12.2 have not prevented the generation of illegal settlements instead they have encouraged people to construct new ones with an expectation of upcoming amnesty laws (Uzun et al. 2010). Therefore, even the recent regulations regarding registration of illegal settlements that are constructed before January 2018 proves that contractors who attempt to build on such lands will eventually have authorized permits through amnesty laws and regulations. Generally, such permits do not comply with either the minimum standards as resistant to seismicity or any development plan decision that allows you to develop any housing area for that specific land that was occupied by those illegal establishments.

On the other hand, it is claimed that the third type of property relations called process of appurtenance dominated the production of regular housing in Turkey’s cities since the 1950s (Balamir 1996, 2002). The process of appurtenance is conceptualized as a model of cooperation between landowners, builders and house buyers to facilitate the construction and share of multi-unit residential blocks. Since it was embraced broadly, its substantial contribution to the physical transformation of cities is described as unprecedented (Balamir 1996). Throughout the country, the rapid expansion of such tenure system that involved large number of households has also been politically recognized. It was an innovative way of housing at that time, although it was informal like the other two property relations aforementioned. Eventually, the State adopted the Flat Ownership Law in 1965 to secure tenure rights that were acquired within this system. By this way, the freehold tenure in independent parts of buildings became a legal and formal way of house ownership in Turkey (Balamir 2002).

Considering the historical background of these property relations during the urbanization process of Turkey, at this point it is necessary to mention that the processes of appropriation and apportionment eventually evolved into the process of appurtenance . Therefore, it is regarded as the main factor that resulted in dense and permanent development of modern cities in Turkey (Balamir 1996).

As seen from Table 12.3, the rapid and massive increase in high-rise developments, i.e. apartments, after 1960s is because of the domination of appurtenance process as a way of city creation and urban lifestyle. It should be noted that the decrease in numbers in the year 2000 is due to Marmara earthquakes in 1999, a period when many residential apartments and houses either collapsed or were heavily damaged. The main reasons for the emergence and dominance of appurtenance process as a tenure system in Turkey deserve further elaboration here since it gradually constitutes today’s vulnerable cities when supported by amnesty laws on illegal establishments through the years.

Table 12.3 Numbers and shares of houses and apartments constructed per year (Balaban 2008, 85)
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Firstly, urban land supply was limited and land prices increased rapidly in urban areas at that time (Balamir 1996). Therefore, intensive investment on multi-storey apartment blocks on relatively small amounts of land gave opportunity to create large numbers of dwelling units. Secondly, appurtenance process came to existence as a response to the lack of capital and investments in the production of urban space. According to Balamir (2002, 172), “the process of appurtenance in Turkey generates new capital rather than consuming existing investment resources or capital transferred from other sectors of the economy”.

After 1980, Turkey began a new phase in urbanization due to several changes in the dynamics and factors that affected urban process. For example, legal and administrative framework of urban planning system and housing policy are one of the areas that had experienced essential changes. In addition, the volume of the production of urban built environment increased rapidly. Both the State and large-scale capital investors have begun to take part so that actors operating in the production of urban space proliferated (Balaban 2008). Nevertheless, these changes did not transform the structure of urban space that was created under the aforementioned property relations all of which have remained in this new phase of urbanization (Balamir 1996). In addition, appurtenance became more widespread as appropriation and apportionment evolved to appurtenance by squatter regularization, amnesties laws and rehabilitations as mentioned above.

Hence, today majority of urban stock in Turkey’s cities is composed of buildings and spaces that were created through either of these property relations or a combination as explained above. Unlawfully built structures that were created by appropriation and apportionment processes mainly have low quality of construction and are located on hazardous areas prone to natural disasters. On the contrary, authorized buildings that were constructed through appurtenance process composed of dense and permanent urban spaces. However, most of them have low construction quality due to the ineffective laws and regulations on construction codes regarding earthquakes as well as ineffective implementation of supervision system. For example, after the 1999 Marmara earthquakes, most of the buildings that were damaged were composed of four or more storeys and were built after the 1980s (CCE 2010). Those areas of authorized buildings that are worn-out are not easily altered and renewed.

Life and property losses after the recent disastrous earthquake in Van have once again ignited same disputes about vulnerable building stock all over the country. Just after Van earthquake central government together with local governments declared through media that from now on the vulnerable stock that were identified by several projects regarding earthquake resistance will be subject to urban renewal projects by the help of Ministry of Environment and Urbanization (hereafter ÇŞBFootnote 5). Additionally, illegal constructions that do not comply with construction standards determined by recent codes will be either demolished by security forces or expropriated by governmental institutions. In 2012, one year later, the Law of transformation of areas under the disaster risks (Law No. 6306) and its regulation in 2013 was published and since then many urban areas have been going through a kind of transformation mainly in residential areas of cities in Turkey. It is a fact that this Law is not the first Law regarding urban transformation projects but it has various controversial applications like coercive government intervention on flat ownership rights as well as opening up ways for building lot-based transformations that have led to rapid physical transformations in cities based on demolish and reconstruct idea. Therefore, in the following sections, it is crucial to explain the benefits of this Law by providing details about the official procedure as well as several examples that many people have come across during implementations.

3 Brief Review of Urban Transformation/Regeneration Laws with a Focus on Law 6306:

The concept of urban transformation /regeneration has been defined and mentioned in legislation since 2004. Prior to that, there had been several urban transformation projects particularly on lands where squatter houses were located without having any legislative changes. The above-mentioned historical background of property relations during urbanization process of Turkey provides basic idea about the urban development process and relations including such urban transformation processes.

To sum up briefly, until 2000s there had been several approaches on urban regeneration of inner-city areas. One of them is the transformation of single building by contractors or landowners. It was realized through the demolition of existing buildings and reconstruction of new ones on the same land in accordance with the limits of right of development plan decisions on those lands. The other approach is intervention on inner cities by regeneration of urban fabric by central or local governmental units such as opening new boulevards, squares and inner-city roads. The major aim of such projects was beautification of cities. The third approach is urban transformation processes after the implication of renewal plans by the help of amnesty laws for squatter areas in order to create regular and healthy living environments for settlements. As shown in Table 12.3, in accordance with the regulations and laws 2805 in 1983 and 2981 in 1984 squatters have been transformed into apartment houses (high-rise development) and legalized by several development rights like 4-storey and maximum 400 m2 building lots that were defined in renewal plans. However, after the 1990s larger areas including building blocks rather than single building lots were preferred for urban transformation processes like Ankara Portakal Çiçeği and Dikmen Valley Urban Transformation Projects (ÇŞB and ITUFootnote 6 2017).

After 2000, several laws that are described in Table 12.4 have been in action until the Law 6306 in 2012. The first legislation regarding urban regeneration and transformation was the Law 5104 for Northern Entrance of Ankara in 2004. In order to improve physical structure, rehabilitation of environmental assets for liveable settlements, a renewal plan that brings new set of development rights was prepared for this specific area. Therefore, property owners and municipal government negotiated and reached a concession that, the properties were to be distributed based on mutual agreement. Following that, the Law 5366 in 2005 was enacted for regeneration or renewal of heritage sites and their associated protection zones. During implementation process of regeneration projects, expropriation can be possible for some cases if there is public interest. With the help of Article 73 of Law 5393 in the same year, municipal law was changed so that in such projects municipal council has to determine the boundaries of such project areas at minimum of 5 ha. However, there is no right of municipalities to expropriate such areas. Therefore, there should be a total agreement within parties. However, in 2010 another amendment regarding municipal law, numbered 5998 the size of project area has been revised to a minimum of 5 and maximum 500 ha while a total of minimum 5 ha could also constitute single and separated parts but related to each other. In this case, the responsible authority is determined as Metropolitan government rather than municipalities (Gür and Türk 2013). The recent Law 6306 was enacted in 2012, namely the Law of Transformation of Areas under the Disaster Risks. Before going through the details of this law, it is necessary to explain some major terms that are defined and used in transformation projects in accordance with this law. “The aim of this law is to determine the procedures and principles regarding the rehabilitation, clearance, and renovation of urban areas and buildings prone to disaster” (ADB 2016, 92). Here, three major definitions and their designation procedure are critical and somehow controversial.

Table 12.4 Summary of the current laws on urban regeneration (Prepared by the author based on ÇŞB and ITU 2017; Çelik and Çilingir 2017)
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Three major definitions are explained as:

  1. a

    Risky area that is determined according to the Law so that redevelopment of that area is implemented by the procedures defined by the Law

  2. b

    Risky building that is determined for rebuilding/reconstruction

  3. c

    Reserve area that is determined to be used as new transitional and residential areas.

Risky area is designated based on at least one of three criteria below:

  1. 1.

    Areas that are determined by Ministry of Environment and Urbanization (hereafter Ministry) or local administration and decreed by Council of Ministers with the consent of AFADFootnote 7 upon the application of Ministry as having risks on life and property due to conditions of ground or structures.

  2. 2.

    Places where public order and safety are disturbed until it affects daily routine, where there are inadequate infrastructural services and planning, structures that are incompatible with development legislation or there are structures or infrastructures that are impaired.

  3. 3.

    Areas where 65% of total number of buildings that are incompatible with development legislation are located or areas where there are buildings that were constructed without construction permit or buildings, which have construction and living permits after they are constructed. These areas might be determined as risky areas by the Decision of Parliament after the application of Ministry in order to produce healthy and safe living environments that are consistent with the norms and standards as well as to ensure the provision of regular public services like health, education and transportation.

Before the AmendmentFootnote 8 in 2016, 163 areas across the country had been determined and declared in Official Gazette based on the definition of first category risky area (Atay 2016). After enacting the Amendment Law April 2016, second category was added to the definition of risky area. With those categories, it is questioned to find any place whether or not located on risky area under such circumstances (Atay 2016). The third category has been added by a new regulation that describes the changes to the Regulation of Law 6306 in October 2016. When the Cabinet of Ministers identifies an area as risky area, the buildings in that area will be demolished and redeveloped by the related institution, private sector or TOKİFootnote 9.

According to Article 2 of this Law, a risky building is a building that is found as risky either within or outside the risky area based on scientific and technical data which indicate that the building has completed its economic life or bears the risk of collapse or suffers from heavy damage. This definition points out three types of risky building: (i) the one that has completed its economic life, (ii) the one that bears the risk of collapse and (iii) the one that suffers from the risk of heavy damage. It is acceptable to have only one application from property/flat owners for launching the process of identification of risk of building. That process can be made by consultation of licensed organizations and institutions.

The Cabinet of Ministers identifies reserve areas, as areas for new developments. In order to eliminate disaster risk on such areas new settlements to be constructed after unpermitted, unauthorized and risky buildings are cleared out.

Although the definitions of risky building and risky area have been explained in the constitution as written above, the determining parameters of such areas and buildings that either can be done by the Ministry (Ministry of Environment and Urbanization) or certified institutions on behalf of property owners are not defined properly. As being the sole authorities, the Ministry and the institutions have not shared the way of determination yet. It is also the same for the determination of reserve areas whose actual development rights are temporarily frozen whenever they are determined as reserve areas. If areas and/or immovable that belong to treasury are found as risky or determined as reserve areas for new development, their ownership has to be transferred to the Ministry.

Such kind of historical development of urban regeneration legislation shows us that urban problems in slum areas have been hardly solved, as well as urban regeneration projects that aim to improve such areas physically, economically and socially in the long term have hardly meet such goals. On the other hand, there is no proper explanation about the ways to reduce disaster risks by implementing urban regeneration processes that are defined by the Law 6306 (Gür and Türk 2013).

4 Elaboration of Challenges Defined

Challenges that are defined in the introduction section are elaborated further in order to provide clear explanations regarding controversial issues that require more investigation. For this reason, each challenge is described first then criticized based on their intentions and possible results compared to current conditions.

4.1 Challenge 1: Local Area-Based Challenges

As of 2016 October, 1718,415 people were affected in 11,971 ha of land since those areas were declared seismically risky in accordance with the implementation of Law of Urban Transformation (No. 6306). Besides, in 22 provinces 34,485 ha of land was designated as reserve area for new settlement for buildings that were located on risky areas (Gündoğmuş 2016). As of 2017 November, in 52 of 81 provinces a total of 191 risky areas were declared in Official Gazettes by the decision of Council of Ministers since 2012. In addition to that, 161,449 buildings, which are made up of 455,716 housing units and 64,996 working units, were declared risky buildings (Çelikbilek and Öztürk 2017).

Since the first declaration of risky areas in İstanbul in October 2012 in Official Gazette (No: 28434), many areas throughout Turkey have already been totally evacuated, demolished and reconstructed based on the transformation project of those areas. However, it is difficult to find general statistical information about the review of the results of transformation processes until today. TOKİ, which is the main official non-profit governmental institution of Turkey in terms of dealing with housing provision for 30 years, has published several statistics since it has the lead position for conducting several housing projects in urban transformation areas that were declared after Law 6306. As of September 2016, 183 urban transformation projects were launched and 53 of them were accomplished. 68,254 housing units of 111,474 produced housing units were delivered to beneficiaries (TOKİ 2016).

On the other hand, individual studies may give some hints about the experience on some selected cities. According to research study conducted by Özgür and Özgür (2018) on the city of Ordu in the Black Sea region, although the urban transformation projects have started in 2013 the accomplishment of reconstruction processes of risky buildings were highly observed. 75% of risky buildings declared were reconstructed based on seismic codes . However, in other parts of the city, which are known as prone to disasters there were no risky buildings. On the other hand, risky areas that were declared in two districts of Ordu have been still waiting for the implementation projects for 2 years. Besides, there has been as of now, no official declaration in areas that record frequent instances of landslides as risky areas.

Another research that worth mentioning is the transformation projects in Bostanlı neighbourhood in İzmir City in Aegean coast and its effects on the rest of urban areas after the implementation processes of Law No. 6306. Çelik and Çilingir had conducted a survey about incremental decisions that include reconstruction of risky buildings in their building lots by private contractors and construction firms (2017). According to the survey results, the spatial distribution of transformed “risky buildings” in the neighbourhood is not homogeneous rather they are dispersed. After official declaration of risky areas and risky buildings, the realization of transformation projects depends on the decision of private contractors who would like to get higher return values. In the case of Bostanlı, since they could get higher return values due to additional independent units to actual property owners of a building, they prefer low-rise risky buildings with few independent units so that they get more share of profit after rebuilding. In the case of no increase in floor area ratios, they do not prefer to launch any transformation project although some high-rise apartment buildings that are located on risky areas need serious solutions for their foundation problems due to ground conditions.

One issue observed from the case of Bostanlı is that most of the low-rise apartments with their private gardens have been changing into high-rise apartments with decreasing amount of private gardens and commercial uses at ground floors after implementation of transformation projects. New conditions affect neighbourhood relations and different forms of lifestyles (Çelik and Çilingir 2017).

In many cases, it is rare to see any retrofitting projects unless they are public buildings. The procedure of the Law encourages and even forces the physical transformation of declared areas and buildings in the name of disaster safety. However, it should be noted that incremental changes regarding seismically safe constructions solely does not ensure disaster safe living environments. On the other hand, in some case like Bostanlı high-rise developments that were encouraged by the law have some doubts about the earthquake risks due to ground conditions such as liquefaction risks that have not been considered by most of the private contractors.

However, there were some studies that propose urban regeneration /transformation model in disaster-prone areas, which discusses better liveable environment where all the stakeholder have chance to be included without only using the tool of increase in floor area ratio as pointed out above. Balamir and its team members (2005) propose Zeytinburnu urban regeneration project that has several contributions in order to find out solutions to common issues born in many regeneration projects before since it aims to demonstrate that comprehensive regeneration could prove viable in physical, economic and social terms, even under most adverse conditions.

4.2 Challenge 2: City-Wide Challenges

Increase in population in the same lot within a neighbourhood as explained in the first challenge would probably create scarcity of infrastructural and social amenities like open and green spaces that are necessary for evacuation activities in the case of any disaster event. Such examples indicate that transformation projects of risky areas and risky buildings declared by central government based on an official procedure defined by the Law have not been evaluated in comprehensive way which is the essence of urban/city planning discipline. Besides, there has been no clue about the prioritization of projects for the benefit of a neighbourhood, district and the city. However, resilient cities are focus on disaster risk reduction not only in building construction safety but also in safety in other sectors with the help of planning discipline.

Another issue is the designation of reserve areas since the logic behind could hardly be understood. In the case of Istanbul , a research study shows designated areas regarding reserve areas include high earthquake risk zones, wetlands and areas like forests, drinking water basins, agricultural areas and archaeological sites that should be preserved from settlement development (Eren and Özçevik 2015, 232).

For instance, other than the huge problem of vulnerable building stock and dense neighbourhoods in cities, there are also some problems related to incompatible land uses and functions in urban areas. The locations of such functions that include hazardous materials and productions as well as industrial and manufacturing uses create high risks on nearby functions like schools, public areas and residential establishments. For instance, closer contact of the locations of hazardous material production and storage areas like inflammable, explosive and chemical materials as well as LPG and gas stations with urban living environments inhabit risk sources.

Therefore, in a city as a whole, effective implementation of comprehensive disaster risk management is a key in order to be a resilient city. Identification of risks in all sectors would give a better basis for solving such a complicated problem. The Earthquake Master Plan of Istanbul (hereafter IDMP) (2003) has such approach with a list of most of the possible risk sectors (extended version in Balamir 2007 and 2012), as follows:

  1. 1.

    Risks of losing productive capacities in the city, mainly due to multiple vulnerabilities of industrial uses

  2. 2.

    Risks of the current and future macro-form of the city

  3. 3.

    Risks of the urban pattern determined by densities and physical clustering of buildings

  4. 4.

    Special risk areas like tsunami impact areas, risk areas subject to liquefaction, landslides, flooding due to dam failure

  5. 5.

    Risks in buildings and infrastructure (lifelines)

  6. 6.

    Risks owing to deficiencies in open spaces in the city

  7. 7.

    Risks arising due to incompatible uses in specific buildings or areas

  8. 8.

    Risks due to distribution of hazardous uses in space

  9. 9.

    Risks due to non-integrated and mal-distribution of emergency facilities in the city

  10. 10.

    Risks of losing cultural heritage sites and structures

  11. 11.

    Risks due to management deficiencies like lack of drills, untrained staff, unorganized volunteers

  12. 12.

    Risks due to other external factors like accidents, terrorism, sabotage, extreme conditions due to climatic and meteorological factors

  13. 13.

    Risks due to constraints on social participation and community organization, etc.

The above-mentioned risk sectors have been elaborated separately so that risk reduction strategies and action plans could be prepared on timely basis for disaster resilient city of Istanbul . However, the implementation of action plans could not be realized as planned due to lack of commitment of all stakeholders and ineffective strategic planning that should be steered and followed by İstanbul Metropolitan Municipality. However, such a kind of approach that aims categorize urban risk sectors can be adopted any disaster-prone settlement in order to build up disaster resiliency.

4.3 Challenge 3: Administrative and Organizational Challenges

Although most of the cities in Turkey were located on hazardous areas, they are exposed to many disaster risks with their dense urban neighbourhood layouts with apartments and vulnerable building stock having construction deficiencies after urbanization process and change in property relations since 1950s. On the other hand, Turkey’s experience of natural disasters and disaster-related legislation may also unveil a fact that the process of urbanization aforementioned above and nationwide disaster management activities has been following separate tracks. Changes in international agenda of disaster managements have few effects on Turkey’s administration and legislation that are still focusing on activities after any disaster events with ineffective and non-practical action programs and reports since there is no political will and public acceptance about risk perception and reduction. Political authority still keeps its political will about helping victims abundantly after any disaster event without considering the impacts on its scarce resources. That kind of approach also hinders a shift in new policies like investing more on risk reduction and mitigation activities.

On the other hand, such kind of approaches has been affected by risk perception of the society, which is not ready due to prevailing awareness and education level. Faithfulness and trusting on such political attitude of caring State after disasters, which have been a common belief, prevent society to become resilient .

It is believed that 1999 was a turning point for restructuring the administrative framework and legislations regarding disaster management that is investing more on risk reduction activities. However, this idea has not yet been fully embraced by all the stakeholders as proven by the losses in recent disaster events. AFAD is the sole authority governing disaster management issues since 2009. It is observed that there are still problems either in coordination with other governmental institutions or local governments. Issues like reluctance in data sharing with other governmental institutions, universities and the public, conflicts due to excluding the public and local governments in any disaster-related projects and inadequacies in implementing disaster-related laws have been continuous bottlenecks that make disaster management system ineffective in Turkey.

Similar issues might be rarely seen in other countries because of keeping disaster management at nation’s top priority as always. Therefore, every other sectors in such a country has been considered in relation to disaster management . For instance, in Japan local governments and communities have always actively participated in disaster-related issues in order to overcome its consequences for obtaining and sustaining resilient communities and societies. The idea of the interrelation of “self-help, mutual aid and public assistance” in the emergency management activities covers all the stakeholders and units at around the goal of disaster resilient communities. Self-help refers to preparation of individual residents that require self-action to protect themselves during a disaster. Mutual aid denotes the preparation activities of local community organizations in order to secure the safety of their local communities during a disaster. Public assistance, on the other hand, covers works to improve tangible aspects of disaster prevention such as infrastructure and facilities as well as intangible aspects like self-help, mutual aid (Sendai City 2017). Therefore, all the stakeholders that are covered by these three spheres in a disaster-prone country take their responsibilities so that they prepare themselves before any disaster.

5 Conclusion

The results of those recent laws and regulations and their implementations are the major challenges of today. It is necessary to conduct further researches in order to find out actual effects on urban areas with empirical findings so that it would be possible to improve the ongoing applications. For instance, the reconstructed areas that have been produced in the last six years require further studies to determine whether they have created safer living environments or caused new risks that have to be taken care of as soon as possible.

Furthermore, such kind of living environments after completion of projects deserve more elaboration to find out whether or not the idea of Built Back Better that was embraced and undertaken by most of the countries was accomplished. At the same time, Sendai Conference’s second priority (i.e. strengthening disaster risk governance to manage disaster risk) needs to be investigated in recent developments in Turkey since it is obvious to observe implementations that are controlled in a quite coercive way by central government which does not have any implementations that all the stakeholders actively and willingly involved.

International agenda on disaster risk management has been evolving through years based on the experiences and lessons learned after each disaster events that many countries have come across. The level international agenda reached tells us that it is critical to enable disaster policy that focuses on not only post-disaster activities but also disaster risk reduction activities that require specialized methods and techniques to managing risks that help to estimate possible effects before any event hits in order to be resilient . The framework document of Sendai Conference points out that multi-hazard management in disaster risk that needs to be developed in each sectoral and inter-sectoral levels was highlighted until the year 2030 (UNISDR 2018).

However, country-wide urban transformation process in the case of Turkey has received some critiques from many authors since it is hard to find any comprehensive logic that prioritizes those transformation activities although its major aim is to produce safe and liveable urban environments. Such activities should be examined in comparison with the scope of international agenda of disaster risk management that was mentioned above.

This chapter, as a conclusion, by defining the challenges regarding current disaster risk management issues in hazard-prone cities of Turkey aims to point out upcoming future risks that might be born due to recent implementations so that it would create an awareness about possible negative impacts of such physical transformations of cities.