The Shift From Healer State to Protector State in a 500-year Period: A Critical Evaluation of Painful Development Struggles in Legal and Administrative Understanding of Disaster Management Strategies in Turkey from 1509 to 2010

Destructions pertaining from hazardous events experienced all over the world for centuries have changed the perception of and response to disaster phenomena among communities as well as institutions. In order to evaluate the shifting understanding and development of this process in Turkey, the first written documents can be dated to the year 1509 in which a strong earthquake struck İstanbul, the capital of the Ottoman Empire. The 1509 earthquake was one of the foremost hazardous events recorded in the history of Turkey (Bayrak, 1996; EvangelatouNotara, 2001; Ambraseys and Finkel, 2006). The earthquake, which occurred on September 14, was named “Little Doomsday” (Griffiths et al., 2007). According to the report of the Research Commission of the Turkish Parliament, the magnitude of the earthquake is estimated between 7.6 and 8.0, and human loss was assumed as 13,000 (TBMM, 1999). The same report stresses that following the earthquake, which severely damaged 109 mosques and 1,047 buildings, the Ottoman Emperor (Sultan Beyazıt the Second) prepared and disseminated a mandate in which 50,000 building craftsmen and workers between 14 and 60 years old were assigned to work in rehabilitation and reconstruction of the destroyed city. In addition, the same mandate prohibited construction of buildings on filled grounds of the coastal areas, as well as trying to force the construction of timber-framed housings instead of construction using heavy materials such as stones.