Erdogan, under the political rubble?

By Claudia Luna Palencia, Atalayar,

For Turkish President Recep Tayipp Erdogan, this catastrophe is a bucket of cold water for his personal and electoral expectations, because at 68 years of age he will once again run for president – on 14 May – and he intends to win again.  Erdogan has led his nation since March 2003, initially as prime minister until August 2014, and since then as president, and now he wants another term.

Turkey is currently in a state of emergency, and the government is under fire because those affected believe it is failing to quickly deliver the aid people are demanding.

The Turkish economy had shown a solid performance in the midst of the pandemic: it grew by over 5% last year and the IMF forecast growth of 3.5% by 2023.

This scenario no longer exists after the devastation left by the two earthquakes with more than 6,500 buildings collapsed, in preliminary data. There are other unofficial figures of 11,000 collapsed buildings in total in the affected provinces… the Turkish president will need a lot of money for reconstruction and to meet the social needs of millions of affected people.

Moreover, people are really angry that they have been left to fend for themselves in the first 48 hours which are crucial for saving lives. In addition, the government has decided to restrict the use of social networks such as Twitter to prevent information chaos, and people believe that in an emergency it is a way to communicate quickly with family and friends.

Erdogan, visibly ageing, asks for “patience” from the grieving population exposed to cold, snow, rain and the immense pain of losing their loved ones and finding themselves without a home… without anything. With a totally uncertain future.

The Turkish opposition adds up negligence, to throw it in the face of the Turkish president and accuse him of corruption, because only in this way can it be understood that the buildings collapsed as if they were made of flour. Many of these buildings were built during Erdogan’s regime.  

Turkey will need a lot of time and money to rise from the ashes. Time to remove the thousands of rubble and a lot of money to rebuild houses, hotels and other infrastructure.

Let’s not rule out external credits and aid not only from the European Union (EU), which always acquiesces to Turkish blackmail in order to prevent Syrian and other Middle Eastern migrants from being smuggled in, but also from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other international organisations.

This economy, which had been growing amidst the storm of the pandemic and the invasion of Russian troops into Ukraine, will feel the effects of the earthquakes.  

What will happen to the figure of Erdogan? He will have to show that he will not be swallowed up by the calamities caused by the earthquakes; so far he is determined to hold the May elections, perhaps he will see that the sooner they happen the less the victims will have to reproach him for the pain of their personal losses.

The Turkish president has for some time been positioning himself on the geopolitical chessboard as an important regional player: he offered to mediate between Putin and Zelenski in search of peace; last year at the NATO summit in Madrid, Erdogan emerged as the hero of the conclave by joining the other leaders in agreeing to Swedish and Finnish membership of the Alliance. And while this did not happen de facto, because both the Hungarian and Turkish Congresses are opposed to ratifying Swedish and Finnish membership of NATO, Erdogan nevertheless created a major coup.

I look at the disaster in Turkey and Syria and think again of corruption and poor urban planning and sprawl. Why are buildings falling down? Perhaps the first question that should be asked is, why are such tall buildings allowed to be built in seismic zones that have been hit by other disasters? This is where permits and building licences come in, and that includes city councils, government delegations and government offices.

No building is built unless it has the necessary official permits, and these are issued by the government, whether in Spain, Mexico, China, Turkey, Syria or anywhere else in the world.

Why do government officials issue permits for skyscrapers or buildings taller than four storeys in areas marked by tectonic plate movement and located on problematic fault lines? I know, it seems so obvious. Most of these licences are granted because there is corruption involved, because the famous “mordida”, “moche” or percentage of 15 or 20% paid by real estate developers to public officials are our daily bread.

And as long as corruption persists over and above all the compelling reasons why large buildings should not be erected in seismic zones if they do not meet the highest standards of protection against this type of risk, then there will continue to be hundreds and thousands of deaths from earthquakes.

Many of the collapsed buildings were built during Erdogan’s nearly twenty years in power and are now flour, with a death toll approaching 50,000.

While Erdogan is not to blame for the earthquakes, he is responsible for the corruption in his country; he is responsible for all the building permits granted by his government over the years, without complying with a safe building protocol, which, in cases like these, in the event of natural circumstances, only increase the number of people killed.

Seismologists have been warning for years of a plate shift with devastating consequences. In fact, there are forecasts of a larger earthquake, and the US Geological Survey monitors and collects information on the risks of tectonic faults in various parts of the world. In the last twenty-five years, the Turkish nation has experienced a series of earthquakes with a magnitude of more than 7 on the Richter scale, but none had left the Dantesque scenes of these days. They were warned… they ignored it.