“GREAT PAIN”
“Our pain is great,” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said, declaring a national day of mourning on Wednesday, and vowing that those responsible would be “held to account”.
Tourism Minister Nuri Ersoy said the hotel had two fire escapes and had passed a fire inspection “in 2024” but some survivors said there appeared to be no safety mechanisms in place.
“There was no alarm, no smoke detector and no fire escape, even though there was smoke all the way up to the 10th floor,” said a tearful man who had been at the hotel since Sunday and was interviewed by several TV channels.
And Yelkovan, who escaped from the third floor, told IHA: “No fire alarm went off … and there was no fire escape,” adding that it had taken “between an hour and an hour-and-a-half” for the firefighters to arrive.
After the flames were finally doused, footage from inside showed the blackened lobby filled with charred wooden furniture and shattered glass.
As Türkiye counted the dead, condolences poured in from leaders such as EU chief Ursula von der Leyen, Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Greek premier Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
