The trial of the 11 people held responsible for the İsias Hotel’s collapse is set to resume on December 3 after having been adjourned on December 24.

The court also ordered that the hotel’s owner Ahmet Bozkurt, his son Mehmet Fatih Bozkurt and the building’s architect Erdem Yıldız to continue to remain in prison.

As in previous hearings, the families of the 35 Turkish Cypriots who were killed when the Isias hotel in the southeastern Turkish city of Adıyaman collapsed during earthquakes in February last year were during today’s hearing.

All 11 defendants currently stand accused of “causing death by conscious negligence” at Adıyaman’s third high criminal court.

If found guilty, they could face a maximum of 22 and a half years in prison each.

Tuesday’s hearing was the first since the submission of a report written about the building’s collapse by İzmir’s Dokuz Eylül University, which said the building’s collapse “was not caused by the earthquake, but by construction and design errors”.

The hotel in Adıyaman hosted a school volleyball team from the Türk Maarif College Secondary School from the TRNC and a group of tourist guides when the quake hit last year.

“If the building had been built under earthquake-related building regulations passed into law in 1998, it would not have collapsed,” it said.

The report also found that the building had collapsed in a different direction than the 11 defendants claimed in the ongoing trial and that this had happened “due to manufacturing errors and structural deficiencies.”

In addition, it found the “illegal floor” built on top of the hotel also had an impact on the building’s collapse.

Additionally, they said the mezzanine floor was “missing” from modelling done in safety reports regarding the hotel, and that as such, its impact was “ignored” when calculations were carried out.

This predicated the “soft storey irregularity” which had been referred to in the report prepared last year by Trabzon’s Karadeniz Technical University.

Soft storey irregularity means the higher floors were constructed more rigidly than the lower floors, meaning if an earthquake struck and the lower floors swayed, those higher collapsed more easily than they necessarily should have.

Meanwhile, President Ersin Tatar expressed his trust in the Turkish judiciary, highlighting that all facts surrounding the case have been meticulously documented in reports.

“Our only solace lies in the potential verdict for intent from Turkish justice,” Tatar stated.

The President commended the unified efforts of the Prime Minister, relevant ministers, opposition parties, and various stakeholders, all of whom have worked tirelessly to ensure a fair resolution to the case.