Osmaniye and Kahmaranmaras, Turkey – When Halil Ibrahim Çalışkan looks at his ruined supermarket on the ground floor of an earthquake-shattered building, he does not blame his bad luck.

“We knew that we lived in an earthquake zone. It’s not fate. People are to blame for making weak buildings,” the 50-year-old shop owner told Al Jazeera in the southern Turkish city of Osmaniye.

Çalışkan, like many earthquake victims, blamed construction companies and what he said was the corruption and incompetence of the authorities in allowing them to cut corners.

“The system is wrong from head to toe,” he said. “You cannot blame fate for everything – people have to do their jobs, they have to follow the laws.”

His shop is in a building named after Devlet Bahceli, the leader of the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and close ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Bahceli was born in Osmaniye province and his mansion, about 100 metres away on the same street, does not have a scratch on it, while Çalışkan was not allowed to enter his building because it was unsafe and will be demolished.

He could only salvage some goods from the outside refrigerator to return to the suppliers and reduce his debt. He estimates he has lost about 1 million Turkish lire ($53,000) from the disaster, has no insurance and no prospects for making a living, and says he has had no support from the state.

“Hard days lie ahead,” he said.

Questions over preparedness, culpability and the response to the disaster are growing as the country struggles to recover about a week after devastating magnitude 7.8 and 7.6 earthquakes that have now killed more than 35,000 people in Turkey and more than 5,800 in Syria.

Erdogan has admitted to “shortcomings” in the state’s response to the earthquakes but insisted the size of the affected areas and harsh winter conditions meant it was “not possible to be prepared for such a disaster”. Turkish authorities say about 13.5 million people have been affected in an area roughly the size of Britain.

But Erdogan’s critics accuse his government of enabling endemic corruption in the construction sector, weak enforcement of building regulations, continuing a decades-long practice of waiving safety certificates for unsafe buildings for a fee, and the misuse of an estimated $3bn raised in an earthquake tax imposed two decades ago that was supposed to make buildings earthquake-resistant and the country more prepared.

The Turkish minister of justice, Bekir Bozdag, has stated that an investigation would be launched into the collapsed buildings to identify and hold accountable everyone who had played a part. The authorities have ordered the arrest of more than 100 people suspected of being responsible for collapsed buildings.

The opinions of survivors are split.

Doğan Işdar, a 63-year-old school caretaker, and his wife Figen, 53, lived on the seventh floor in Çalışkan’s building. They have been given food, clothing, and a place to sleep in a dormitory by the authorities.

“I want to say thanks to our government, it’s so strong, it’s helping us so much – more than we need,” Doğan said.

Figen agreed that rogue builders were to blame for shoddy construction, pointing to the rubble of an 11-storey building across the street, in which about 80 people died, but said they had concealed their crimes from the authorities.

“This was fate – it’s enough that we have our lives,” Figen said.

At the same time, she could not imagine their future and was relying on her faith.

“We have no idea what we will do,” Figen said. “Allah will help us and show the right way.”

Read the rest of the article published by Al Jazeera English here.