Important financial structures and corporations in Turkey are preparing to move their headquarters from Istanbul to Ankara, Turkish media write. This is explained by the desire to minimize risks due to the possibility of an earthquake, which is higher in the largest metropolis of the country than in the capital.
The headquarters of Turkey's largest financial institutions and branches of many international holdings are located in Istanbul as an economic and financial hub. And after the earthquake with the epicenter in Kahramanmarash, we decided to hedge in the sense of additional security measures.
Bulent Aydemir, one of the authors of Habertürk, assessed the situation with the transfer of financial institutions and companies to Ankara in an article specifically devoted to this topic. Emphasizing the expediency of such a decision. He recalled that when the Central Bank, the administrative structures of state-owned banks and the management centers of the institutions of the Turkish Welfare Fund were moved to Istanbul. Now, because of the risk of serious aftershocks, it would be right to return them to the capital - the administrative center, which is also geographically close to Istanbul, and to other trade hubs of Turkey, and to ports: "Istanbul is the heart of Turkey; and God forbid an earthquake in Istanbul will cause a heart attack for the whole of Turkey. To prevent this crisis, it is necessary to plan preventive measures in advance and take the necessary steps".
Istanbul is indeed predicted to have an earthquake in the foreseeable future - within a dozen years. Experts fear that if you do not hurry up with the program of strengthening and rebuilding emergency buildings, then in this case, after the tremors, the situation may be even worse than during the Kahramanmarash earthquake, when mostly non-earthquake-resistant houses were destroyed. However, the urban transformation program is in full swing, although not as fast as we would like: at least a quarter of a million residential units in thousands of buildings urgently need to be updated. In parallel, the restoration of 200 000 damaged residences started.