Ankara 41,000 dead, hundreds of thousands injured, millions homeless: The February 6 earthquake hit Turkey hard, and two weeks later the country is slowly waking up from its shock. And the horror turns to anger. It is anger at the political leadership, anger at the autocratic President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
And it is a rage that no responsible person can escape. The presidential elections are scheduled for mid-May. Then the balance of power in the country could change.
New surveys from the time after the earthquake are not yet available, but the mood among the population is charged. On May 14, people are to elect a new parliament and head of state. And one thing is certain: More and more Turks want to settle accounts with their government – and are now finding their topic in Ankara’s crisis management.
It’s about the central points of criticism, such as the lack of disaster relief, poor health care, the construction defects of the collapsed houses. In addition, however, it has long been about the small symbols that sometimes attain oversized importance in the public eye. Health Minister Koca, Interior Minister Soylu and Construction Minister Kurum have all been criticized for wearing three-day beards at their regular press conferences in the earthquake region.
It is a tradition in Islamic culture not to shave for several days after a catastrophe or the death of a relative. But many suspect that those responsible only wanted to effectively present their own commitment.
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“They only do PR!” It said in comments on Twitter. “It’s a blatant attempt to demonstrate that they work hard and don’t have time for their personal hygiene,” others write. “Nowadays, the governing party AKP is just a bad PR machine.” The fact that Health Minister Koca does not belong to any political party goes under the criticism.
Many in Turkey say more people would have survived the 7.7-magnitude earthquake if emergency response had been quicker and better organized.
In the meantime, even renowned columnists like Murat Yetkin have reported that Defense Minister Hulusi Akar might have waited in vain for Erdogan to send his soldiers to the crisis areas in the first few days. The head of state may have insisted on first sending his own Afad civil protection team to the area.
After the earthquake, Prime Minister Erdogan faces an uncertain political future.
(Photo: IMAGO/ZUMA Wire)
Whether this is true is entirely unclear. “Maybe Akar wanted to say it that way, but he didn’t say it,” Even Yetkin has to admit at the end. But with that, the rumor is all the more in the world.
Even the reference to the unusual extent of the quake does not bring the government off the defensive. On the contrary, criticism of crisis management is increasing. “The general problem here is organization, especially in the health sector,” said Onur Naci Karahanci, a doctor working in Adiyaman, southeastern Turkey. So there were not enough body bags for the dead in the days after the quake.
Some survivors said they had tried unsuccessfully to contact Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD). In the end, they asked the local teams to rescue their loved ones from the rubble. But there they were given to understand that such inquiries must be processed through the Afad coordination centers.
The state gets money and evades responsibility
The criticism of the construction quality of many houses does not stop either. Images and video footage of collapsed buildings, where the concrete is crumbling or where it is obvious that not enough steel had been used, are circulating on the internet. A photo shows shells in the concrete rubble – an indication that sea sand was used as a building material. “How are the victims supposed to have known that their houses were literally built on sand?” asks a renowned Turkish chef. He speaks of massive construction defects.
The quake claimed tens of thousands of lives in Turkey and Syria.
(Photo: AP)
After an earthquake in 1999, the government at the time tightened building regulations. But now many people are accusing the current government of not having checked these regulations. A construction amnesty from 2018, which allowed builders to legalize their houses without official approval for a fee, is now fatal for those responsible in Ankara.
Because the amnesty stipulated, among other things, that the seismic safety of the building was the sole responsibility of the builders and not controlled by the state. “The state takes the money and evades responsibility,” concludes a Twitter user.
In the already polarized Turkish society, the question of possible guilt for the earthquake immediately became a political discourse. Whether well-founded politics, unverifiable statements or deliberately placed lies: social media are becoming the catalyst for heated debates. Many pictures of alleged construction defects, but also rumors of poor crisis management and government mistakes are shared thousands of times.
Most rescue efforts have been halted
On the morning of February 6, a 7.7-magnitude tremor shook southeastern Turkey and northern Syria, followed hours later by a second severe 7.6-magnitude tremor.
Experts such as those from the Technisches Hilfswerk (THW), who have helped on site themselves, confirm that a natural disaster of this magnitude initially overwhelms all state and private aid mechanisms. In addition to houses and other buildings, the earthquakes also broke up streets, so that the first helpers were initially unable to reach some places.
Two weeks after the earthquake disaster, little rescue work is still going on. In the provinces of Kahramanmaras and Hatay alone, the search for victims continues, said the head of civil protection, Afad Yunus Sezer, in Ankara. Almost 47,000 dead have now been registered, more than 41,000 in Turkey alone, the rest in north-west Syria. Rebuilding could cost up to $84 billion.
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