• 84 people accused of being responsible for the collapse of structures have been arrested.
• The cumulative number of dead in Turkey and bordering Syria is more than 50,000.
• The mayor of the Nurdagi district in the province of Gaziantep was also arrested.

A minister said on Saturday that Turkey has arrested 184 people accused of being responsible for the collapse of structures in this month’s earthquakes, and that investigations are expanding as anger grows over what many regards as fraudulent building practices.

The death toll from the earthquakes, the most intense of which struck in the middle of the night on February 6, increased to 44,128 in Turkey overnight. That took the cumulative number of dead in Turkey and bordering Syria to more than 50,000.

The disaster, Turkey’s biggest in modern history, destroyed or badly damaged about 160,000 buildings and 520,000 units.

During a news conference in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir, which was one of ten provinces affected by the disaster, Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag revealed that more than 600 persons had been probed in connection with collapsed structures.

According to him, those formally detained and held in custody include 79 construction contractors, 74 people with legal responsibility for buildings, 13 property owners, and 18 people who had made improvements to properties.

Many Turks are outraged by what they perceive to be fraudulent building methods and defective urban development.

President Tayyip Erdogan, who faces the most serious electoral challenge of his two-decade rule in the June elections, has promised accountability.

Haber and other media, the mayor of the Nurdagi district in the province of Gaziantep, who is a member of Erdogan’s ruling AK Party, was among those arrested as part of the investigations into collapsed structures.

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