"obscenely strict building codes are a net-positive" Context matters and Turkey is a notorious earthquake area. What might be tolerable in Lithuania is crimina

"obscenely strict building codes are a net-positive" Context matters and Turkey is a notorious earthquake area. What might be tolerable in Lithuania is criminal on an active fault line. You haven't even demonstrated that the apartments were actually cheaper for the customers. They were cheaper to build, but their price was probably determined by the market and the notorious informational asymmetry, and the money saved by cheating might have been split between the developers and the crooked officials. It is entirely possible that people paid through their nose for housing that would later kill them. If you look at the Chinese market, the "tou-fou dreg" buildings still command a premium price.