Trial Starts After Turkey Ski Resort Hotel Fire
8th July 2025
Last modified on August 26th, 2025
32 people have gone on trial after 78 people died in a hotel fire in the ski resort of Kartalkaya last January.
The blaze swept through the 12-storey Grand Kartal Hotel in the early hours of 21st January.
Thirteen of the defendants, including senior officials at the hotel, the fire department and the city council, face up to 1,998 years in prison each on 78 charges, including “manslaughter with possible intent” to kill.
Those facing manslaughter charges include the hotel’s owner, managers and members of the board, the deputy mayor of Bolu city and two fire department officials.
Survivors and experts have said the hotel’s fire alarm system did not work correctly and the evacuation was chaotic with many people having no way to leave the building.
The blaze started when a faulty electric grill plate in the kitchen overheated.
The fire was quickly out of control and the hotel filled with toxic smoke.
The flames also spread to wooden cladding on the exterior of the hotel.
The indictment found there was ‘no audible warning’ system and that the hotel’s ‘emergency action plan was inadequate’ with its staff ‘inexperienced and untrained… and caused the fire to accelerate by opening the main doors of the car park’.
It was the busy winter school holidays and there were 238 guests staying in the hotel at the time.
PlanetSKI reported on the blaze from nearby Istanbul:
We had skied in the resort of Kartalkaya in the previous season:
Skiing in Kartalkaya, Turkey. Image © PlanetSKI
Due to the large number of defendants and plaintiffs the Bolu High Criminal Court is sitting at a school sports hall.
Relatives of the deceased gathered outside where they read out a statement, alleging numerous breaches of safety and attempts to conceal evidence.
“During the fire, the owners, managers and employees of the Grand Kartal Hotel failed to alert guests or activate the alarm system.
“They rushed to save their cars while our loved ones were suffocating in the smoke.
“An inspection report drawn up just one month before the fire clearly showed a lack of fire safety measures, but the hotel owners ignored it on the grounds that the measures would be too costly.
“We know that the authorities turned a blind eye to this negligence, that evidence was concealed and that the camera recordings were deleted.”
We previewed the trail is this earlier PlanetSKI article:
The trial is expected to last two weeks.
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