Erdoğan races to prevent political fallout from earthquake

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, facing re-election in May or June, is well aware that his political fate depends on a swift and decisive response to Monday’s earthquake and aftershocks that devastated cities in southern Turkey and killed thousands of people.

After all, Turkey’s recent history provides a clear cautionary tale that indecision is politically dangerous. When a massive earthquake struck the Izmit region near Istanbul in 1999, then-prime minister Bülent Ecevit – paralyzed by the magnitude of the disaster – was widely condemned because he failed to mobilize quickly enough. Some 18,000 people died.

Erdogan seems determined to avoid making the same mistakes, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have bigger potential problems ahead.

Hours after the tremors first struck, he sobbed to make it clear he was now taking charge and appeared clearly angered and frustrated by officials’ initial efforts to carry out rescue and emergency operations.

Speaking at a hastily organized news conference at the country’s disaster coordination center in Ankara, he said the country was beset by the biggest natural disaster since 1939, when a major earthquake devastated the eastern province of Erginkan, killing more than 100,000. Buildings were leveled or severely damaged. and killed about 33,000 people.

“Everyone is putting their heart and soul into the efforts, although the winter weather, cold weather and earthquakes during the night make things more difficult,” he told reporters. And also on Tuesday, Erdoğan was in front of the cameras, declaring a three-month state of emergency for 10 provinces that were badly hit by the deadly quake.

Giving an update on the rescue and humanitarian efforts to date, he said that around 54,000 tents and 102,000 beds have already been sent to the affected areas.

But the recent 1999 Izmit earthquake — rather than the 1939 tremor — may have been on Erdogan’s mind, said Gonul Tol, director of the Turkey program at the Middle East Institute, a Washington DC-based think tank.

Speaking to Politico from Hatay, one of the areas devastated by Monday’s quake, Tol said the press berated the government for its poor emergency response in 1999. Similarly, she said, although this time the earthquakes could not be prevented, the suffering has been compounded by an inadequate response in the immediate hours after their occurrence.

“The tragedy is made worse – especially for people like me who have lost loved ones,” said Tol, who lost two relatives in the quake. “I was there, and there was no rescue team. People were trying to pull out loved ones by themselves. So for hours and hours, we could not find anyone to help us. It was bitter cold, there was no food, There was no water, and we couldn’t see anyone from the government, we couldn’t see anyone from any state institutions, there were no rescue workers, nothing,” she said.

He said that Izmit was an aftershock of an earthquake whose epicenter was barely 50 miles east of the outskirts of Istanbul. It completely shook up the country’s institutions and reshaped the country’s politics in a way that later helped Erdogan come to power. In the next parliamentary elections in 2002, Ecevit’s centre-left Democratic Left Party, the Nationalist Action Party and the centrist Motherland Party – the factions that dominated Turkish politics in the 1990s – passed the 10 percent vote threshold needed to secure parliamentary seats. failed to cross. Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party won a landslide victory.

According to historian and former New York Times journalist Stephen Kinzer, Ecevit was numbed by the scale of the destruction, falling into “a prolonged state of shock”. a 2001 study of Izmit for the Middle East Quarterly.

“Instead of immediately hopping on a helicopter to survey the disaster area and then ordering his aides to act, he spent days telling anyone who would listen that everything was under control and there was no need to worry.” ,” said Kinzer. “Army commanders who might be expected to deploy thousands of troops to the stricken area also sat on their hands. It soon became clear that although Turkey sits atop some of the world’s most dangerous geological faults and is rocked by earthquakes every few years, its government had no plan to deal with them, no disaster-relief agency, No civil-defence network, not even an officer designated to take charge at such moments,” he said.

To add insult to injury, the government’s earthquake relief fund was empty, with the Turkish lira equivalent to €4.45.

“Government officials kept stumbling aimlessly, unable to grasp the dimensions of the disaster. Prime Minister Ecevit later tried to excuse the government’s slow response by saying that it was necessary to allow rescue teams to reach the devastated cities. The streets were overcrowded,” Kinzer wrote. Ministers blamed the press, accusing journalists of distorting events and defaming the government.

Erdogan now appears to be learning from that sluggish response. Unusually, Erdoğan wants to be filmed at the center of a disaster.

“You know how much he loves the cameras, but whenever there’s a disaster in the country, he just disappears,” Toll said. “He usually lets his ministers and people around him deal with the problem. So if anything goes wrong, he can blame them.” This time, however, Erdoğan has intervened more publicly than usual and appealed for international help.

But whether he can escape the political fallout remains to be seen, say analysts.

According to Borzou Daraghahi, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, “Just one building collapses in a known earthquake zone, it’s a tragedy.” “If dozens collapse in several major cities, it is a sign of a preventable tragedy. Turkey vowed to implement changes to its construction practices after the tragic 1999 earthquake that killed 17,000 people. established new building regulations and enforced compulsory earthquake insurance for all buildings. Architects and urban planners have been warning for years that the regulations are not being followed strictly,” he said.

Many areas devastated by earthquakes, such as Gaziantep, Hatay and Sanliurfa, have seen a construction boom over the past two decades encouraged by Erdoğan, and one he is riding electorally. The massive construction projects involve companies that have strong ties to Erdoğan and his ruling Justice and Development Party. Erdoğan’s party could be blamed if new buildings and apartment blocks are found to be more unsafe than older buildings.

And Erdoğan faces another challenge politically: quickly coming up with temporary housing arrangements for survivors and the wounded.

Tol said that on that score, he may come to regret cracking down on NGOs and forcing the closure of many civil society organizations. “At least in 1999 there were many civil society organizations working with state institutions. Not this time as he basically wiped out all civil society groups except those promoting his agenda.