ISTANBUL — The six-story building on Barbaros Street in Bagcilar, a working-class district on Istanbul’s European side, has a crack running from the second floor to the fourth that the residents have painted over three times. In September, a municipal engineer put a red sticker on the door. By the end of the year, the 24 families inside must leave.
Istanbul began the most ambitious phase of its urban transformation program this autumn, offering residents of buildings judged at high risk of collapse a monthly rent subsidy of 12,500 lira, or about $300, for up to three years plus a guaranteed apartment in a rebuilt block, in exchange for moving out so the structure can be demolished. The municipality and the national housing authority have identified about 1.5 million housing units in the city, roughly a quarter of the total, that predate the 1999 seismic code or were built without permits, and they estimate 600,000 are at serious risk.
The urgency is scientific. The North Anatolian fault runs beneath the Sea of Marmara about 20 kilometers south of the city, and the segment nearest Istanbul has not ruptured since 1766. The Kandilli Observatory estimates the probability of a magnitude 7 or greater earthquake affecting the city at between 50 and 65 percent before 2050. The 2023 earthquakes in southeastern Turkey, which killed more than 53,000 people, demonstrated what unreinforced concrete does under those conditions.
“After 2023, no one in this city argues about whether. They argue about which buildings first,” said Dr. Ayse Demirtas, a structural engineer at Istanbul Technical University who advises the program. “We have the engineering to make Istanbul survivable. We do not have the time to do it in the order we would like.”
The program has moved slowly for reasons that have little to do with engineering. Turkish property law requires two-thirds of a building’s owners to agree to demolition, and many buildings are owned by dozens of heirs. Residents in districts such as Bagcilar and Esenyurt fear that rebuilt blocks will come with higher charges, or that developers will add floors and sell them to newcomers; the program allows developers to add up to 30 percent more floor area to finance the work. The rent subsidy, while generous by local standards, does not cover a comparable apartment in most of the city, where rents have more than tripled since 2021.
Mehmet Yildirim, 67, a retired bus driver who has lived on Barbaros Street since the building was finished in 1988, said he had signed. “My neighbor says we will never get the apartment back, that they will build a tower for rich people,” he said. “Maybe. But I have seen the pictures from Hatay. I would rather be cheated than buried.”
The municipality says 41,000 units were demolished or vacated in the first nine months of the year, up from 18,000 in all of 2025, and has set a target of 100,000 a year. At that pace, the high-risk stock would take six years. The national government, which controls the housing authority, and the city, run by the opposition, have disagreed publicly over who is responsible for the delay. A plan to use a 14-billion-lira earthquake levy on new construction has stalled in parliament.
On Barbaros Street, the residents have begun carrying furniture down the stairs. Ms. Demirtas, who inspected the building, said it would likely pancake in a magnitude 7 event. “The crack they painted over,” she said, “is the building telling them the truth.”
A version of this article appears in print on Oct. 12, 2026, Section A, Page 2 of the European edition with the headline: Istanbul Races to Rebuild 1.5 Million Homes Before an Earthquake Everyone Expects.
