Tension and heartache filled the courtroom at the Adıyaman 3rd High Criminal Court on Tuesday during the fourth hearing of the İsias Hotel trial, where victims’ families anxiously followed the proceedings.

The trial of the 11 people held responsible for the collapse of the Isias hotel in the southeastern Turkish city of Adıyaman, which killed all 24 children and 11 adults representing the Gazimağusa Turk Maarif Koleji (secondary school) volleyball team during the earthquakes which hit the region in February last year, was on Tuesday adjourned until December 3.

Tuesday’s hearing at Adiyaman’s third high criminal court saw tensions raised, with the final stretch of the day’s session seeing hotel owner Ahmet Bozkurt taking questions directly from lawyer Pervin Aksoy İpekcioğlu, whose daughter Serin was among those killed when the hotel collapsed.

Their exchanges involved questions regarding the hotel’s construction and the composition of the materials used, with İpekçioğlu referring to the Istanbul Technical University’s finding that the building had suffered from “soft storey irregularity.”

This means the higher floors were constructed more rigidly than the lower floors, and thus when the earthquake struck and the lower floors swayed, the higher floors collapsed more easily than they necessarily should have.

Ahmet Bozkurt maintained his innocence throughout, saying that he had seen the ruins of the hotel before he was arrested and that “90 per cent of Adiyaman had been destroyed” by the earthquake.

He will remain in custody until December 3, having been in custody since his arrest in February 2023.

The other two defendants, Bozkurt’s son Mehmet Fatih Bozkurt and the building’s architect will continue to remain in custody.

Meanwhile, judicial control measures for the other defendants—Efe Bozkurt, Halil Bağcı, Hasan Aslan, Mehmet Göncüoğlu, Şule Özbek, and Ülviye Bozkurt—remain unchanged, allowing them restricted freedom pending further legal proceedings.

More than 100 people, including family members of those who were killed, Prime Minister Ünal Üstel, ministers, the leader of the main opposition Republican Turkish Party (CTP), MPs and politicians, a delegation of the Cyprus Turkish Bar Association, and an army of journalists have been following the trial in Adıyaman.