Coinciding with the first anniversary of the devastating fire at the Grand Kartal Hotel in the ski resort of Kartalkaya (Bolu, Turkey) where 78 people lost their lives, relatives of the victims braved the cold and gathered in front of the remains of the burnt hotel to honour the memory of the deceased and demand answers.
In the early hours of 21 January 2025, a fire that broke out in the hotel’s kitchen quickly spread through the 12-storey building, trapping dozens of guests in their rooms, especially on the higher floors, from where some tried to escape by hanging out of windows with sheets and others desperately jumped out to escape from the fire to find death. The lack of proper fire detection systems, alarms and emergency exits, and the negligence of the hotel managers – who fled without alerting anyone– contributed to the scale of the tragedy.
Today’s memorial service began at 03:18, the exact time the fire started. Despite the cold temperatures – as low as minus 15 degrees Celsius – attendees hung posters displaying photographs and names of the deceased, laid carnations at the site and released wish balloons in their memory into the air. The names of the 78 victims were also projected onto the façade of the hotel, Turkish media reported.
Serpil Gençbay, who lost her son in the terrible fire, said during the ceremony that the pain they felt when they learned they had lost their loved ones was indescribable: “We are like the living dead. But if justice prevails thanks to the struggle of these families and all those responsible receive their punishment, perhaps we will find some relief,” she confessed.
A chain of negligence caused the tragedy
The investigation found that the fire started in the hotel’s kitchen and quickly spread throughout the building, while the absence of working alarms and operational fire escapes in the hotel was one of the main reasons for the high loss of life, as most of the victims were caught in the fire and smoke while sleeping in their rooms.
Following the tragedy, a day of national mourning was declared throughout Turkey and a commission was set up in the Turkish parliament to investigate all aspects of the incident, with expert reports revealing that the fire was the result of a chain of numerous accumulated negligence: safety systems that did not work, inspections that did not check anything, technicians and managers who did not do their job…. 32 suspects were brought to trial, among them the owner of the hotel, the managers and several public officials.
Finally, at the end of October 2025, a court in Bolu sentenced 11 of the defendants in the fire, including the owner of the hotel – Halit Ergül – and several senior managers of the company, to life imprisonment for their responsibility in the fire: 34 life sentences for each defendant for each of the 34 minors killed in the fire – almost half of those killed in the fire were children – and another 44 sentences for each defendant of 24 years and 11 months in prison for each of the adults killed. The court thus applied the most severe penalty provided for in the Turkish Penal Code by charging them with ‘intentional homicide’, although the sentence has been appealed and is pending of a final resolution.
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Edited and reviewed by:
Pablo Gómez is a specialist in Turkey and has been editor-in-chief of Hispanatolia since 2011. He has been analysing current affairs and geopolitics in Turkey and the surrounding region since 2006.
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