DEM Party calls for ministers to resign over fire tragedy

The Peoples' Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) has issued a statement regarding the fire that broke out at the Grand Kartal Hotel in Bolu Kartalkaya.

In the statement, those responsible, primarily Minister of Culture and Tourism Mehmet Nuri Ersoy, were invited to resign.

The full text of the statement made by the DEM Party is as follows:

"In the fire that broke out in the early hours of January 21 at a hotel in the Bolu Kartalkaya ski region, 78 of our people, most of them children, lost their lives, and dozens of people were injured. We wish God's mercy upon those who lost their lives, offer our condolences to their families, and wish a speedy recovery to the injured.

Since the AKP government took office in 2003, 54 thousand 780 people have lost their lives and tens of thousands have been injured in events we define as massacres, such as earthquakes, mining accidents, train accidents, flood disasters, dormitory and hotel fires, and factory explosions.

The economic and social policies implemented by the AKP government have brought lawlessness and reinforced impunity. Human life has ceased to be valuable and has been instrumentalized solely for the policies being implemented. The facts revealed in the Kartalkaya massacre show how dire this situation is. It has emerged that the Regulation on the Protection of Buildings from Fire, which came into effect in 2007, has not been fully implemented. Since the majority of hotels in Turkey were built before 2007, it is not even known whether they have been brought into compliance with the new regulation.

The massacre in Kartalkaya has been turned into a power and authority struggle between the central administration and the local administration; the pain of the families was disrespected and the families were offended before the funerals were even held. This massacre, like the 2023 Maraş earthquakes, has once again revealed the drawbacks of the central administration having excessive authority. The massacre has shown that inspections were carried out for show or not at all due to the AKP's pro-capital economic policies. The near-elimination of non-public inspection mechanisms and the restriction of the inspection powers of the TMMOB and its affiliated chambers also cause such massacres to increase.

This massacre is another result of the policy of impunity. The policy of impunity appears not only in killings and massacres caused by illegal structures within the state, but also in massacres that occur as a result of the public failing to fulfill its effective inspection responsibility during natural disasters or tragedies.

'CALL FOR MINISTERS TO RESIGN'

In the Bolu Kartalkaya massacre, those in primary positions of responsibility, primarily the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, are failing to fulfill their responsibility to resign, lacking political ethics. Ministers who do not feel political responsibility toward our peoples should not sit in those seats for even a minute!

As the DEM Party, we demand the establishment of a research commission within the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (TBMM) to uncover the causes and those responsible for this massacre, that the investigation conducted by the Bolu Chief Public Prosecutor's Office be made transparent to allow social stakeholders to follow the investigation, and that all buildings where people live collectively, such as hotels, motels, pensions, dormitories, and schools, which were licensed before the regulation that came into effect in 2007, be urgently inspected. Those responsible must resign immediately and be punished in the most severe way through an effective investigation.

We also call on our peoples to be more sensitive against a possible new policy of impunity. Our party will follow this process closely and continue its struggle to ensure that those responsible receive the punishment they deserve."