High-profile trial for deadly hotel fire that killed 78 opens in Turkey

ISTANBUL (AP) — A total of 32 defendants went on trial on Monday over a deadly fire that tore through a popular Turkish ski resort hotel, killing 78 people and injuring 133 others.

The Jan. 21 fire hit the 12-story Grand Kartal Hotel at the Kartalkaya ski resort in the province of Bolu during the winter school break. Dozens of children taking family vacations were among the victims.

The tragedy, which saw guests and staff jump out of windows to escape smoke and flame-filled rooms or dangle sheets out of windows to lower themselves down, sent shockwaves across Turkey and sparked widespread calls for accountability over negligence and safety violations.

Thirteen of the defendants face potential jail terms of 1,998 years each on charges of killing or wounding with possible intent, according to the state-run Anadolu Agency, citing a 98-page indictment from the Bolu Public Prosecutor’s Office. The 19 others are charged with negligently causing death or injury, for which they could be jailed for 22½ years.

With 210 plaintiffs and 32 defendants involved in the high-profile case, the trial is taking place at a sports center in Bolu that has been temporarily converted into a 700-seat courtroom to accommodate the proceedings, Anadolu reported.

Victims’ relatives are speaking up against hotel management

On Monday, family members and friends of the victims staged a demonstration outside the sports center, holding up posters of their loved ones and demanding justice.

“This is not neglect, it is murder,” Anadolu quoted Zeynep Kotan, the mother of 17-year-old Omur Kotan, who lost her life in the fire, as saying.

In a statement read before the hearing, the victims’ families accused the hotel management of doing nothing to save guests. “They did not give any warning or activate an alarm system. ... While they were going to rescue their cars, our loved ones were suffocating from the smoke inside.”

Mehmet Guner, a former Bolu lawmaker with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s party, lost his daughter, son-in-law and four grandchildren in the fire. Addressing the court, he said the government should share blame for the blaze.

“The defendants brought before the court are a portion of the guilty,” he was quoted as saying by the Cumhuriyet newspaper and other media outlets. “However, in this incident, the minister of tourism and the officials of the Ministry of Labor and Social Security are just as guilty. ... We will do our best to have them tried.”

Defense lawyer Recep Emre Ertas, who represents the hotel’s general manager, Ahmet Demir, later sparked outcry when he told the court that the disaster had been “nothing more than a painful accident.”

The guests were not alerted in time

The fire started at 3:17 a.m., as a spark from an electric grill plate in the fourth-floor kitchen lit a nearby garbage bin before melting the hose of a liquefied petroleum gas, or LPG, and igniting the gas.

Staff first noticed the flames at 3:24 a.m. and called the emergency services but within two minutes the blaze had “exceeded controllable limits,” according to the indictment.

The blaze took hold of the wooden ceiling, accelerated by the flow of air from a door left open by escaping kitchen staff.

The indictment says that inadequate measures on the stairs and elevators and the lack of a smoke extraction system caused flammable and toxic fumes to swiftly spread to the upper floors, filling corridors with smoke.

The lack of emergency alarms, faulty fire detection and warning systems and insufficient staff fire training meant the hotel’s 238 guests were not alerted to the blaze in time.

Escape routes through the stairways and emergency exits were not properly fitted and there was no sprinkler system, turning the hotel’s stairwells and life shafts into “chimneys” for the smoke to quickly reach the upper floors.

The indictment adds that the absence of emergency lighting, fire escape signs and alternative exits stopped the safe evacuation of guests.

The 14-day trial will hear that legal responsibility lay with owner Halit Ergul and company board members, including his wife and daughters, and managers.

Also facing the higher punishment are Bolu’s deputy mayor and deputy fire chief. Those facing the lesser charges consist of hotel staff, inspection officials and maintenance workers.

The hotel first opened in 1999, and has been operated by Ergul’s company since 2007.

In a statement to prosecutors made within days of the fire, Ergul said the hotel was checked for fire safety every two years by government-authorized inspectors before receiving a tourism certificate, allowing it to operate. The most recent certificate was due to expire in March.

The hotel’s last inspection by the Culture and Tourism Ministry was conducted five weeks before the fire, Ergul said.