The major earthquakes, which last Monday devastated a huge area in south-eastern Turkey and a part of Syria, killing more than 24,500 people in Turkey and 4500 in Syria, wounding tens of thousands and leaving a huge, but unknown number of missing persons have upended the election plans of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
For the first time in 20 years, Erdogan’s political future is really on the line. He must now prove that he is a leader who can get things done and can mobilize effectively the machine of the state to provide relief to the affected people and help them rebuild their homes and their lives. The two major earthquakes at magnitudes of 7.7 and 7.6 caused the collapse like a house of cards of many thousands of residential and public buildings as well as hotels and hospitals in 10 provinces, affecting more than 7.6 million people. Martin Griffiths, the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, said he expects the death toll to at least double.
Many Turks are very angry with the government because after the destructive earthquake of 1999 (which killed about 17,000 people) legislation was enacted providing that all new buildings must comply with strict seismic building codes. However, the enforcement of the legislation by the local authorities was quite lax and many contractors were using inferior materials and kept constructing unsafe buildings, ignoring the relevant specifications. What is more, the government had imposed a special tax supposedly aimed at reinforcing existing buildings against earthquakes. Although more than USD 17 billion had been collected, there are claims that only a portion of this money was actually used for the stated purpose of seismic protection, while most of the money was spent for other purposes. The AKP also granted a controversial amnesty for illegal construction, which brought a lot of money to government coffers, while the construction companies Erdogan has always favoured made savings of billions, but failed to protect residents from earthquakes.