Earthquake fears loom large in Istanbul’s mayoral race 

MELIH OZUNAL and his neighbours had reason to worry about the state of their apartment block in Goztepe, on Istanbul’s Asian shore. They had long known that the cement used in their building, which dates back to the late 1980s, had been made from corrosive sand dredged from the bottom of the Marmara Sea. But last year, after he discovered that the contractor had used 16-millimetre iron rebars instead of the 18mm ones mentioned in the original plans, Mr Ozunal, an architect, asked the local authorities to check the building’s earthquake resilience. “Everyone here is anxious,” he says, as inspectors use a hammer to test the concrete in one of the columns. “We may need to have the building torn down and replaced.”