The devastating earthquake in southern Turkey on February 6, with more than 44,200 people killed, tens of thousands wounded, more than 164,000 buildings destroyed, and damage exceeding USD 80 billion, is surely Turkey’s worst humanitarian disaster in modern history. It has also forced President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to change the focus of his election campaign.
These elections may turn out to be the most symbolic, dramatic, and important in Turkey’s modern history, as they will mark the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Republic of Turkey, will decide the course the country will take in the coming decades, and will also determine if Erdogan’s 22-year domination of Turkey’s political life will come to an end or not.
The earthquake has overturned Erdogan’s previous political election agenda. Before February 6, his aim was to contain the growing discontent with the rampant inflation, the falling price of the Turkish lira, and the sharp increases in the prices of foodstuffs and energy, by giving salary and pension increases, as well as making promises about early retirement. Now he will try to persuade the Turkish people that he is the only one who can rebuild the destroyed houses and cities in a year (rather than the five years promised by the opposition parties) and provide tolerable living conditions for the tens of thousands who have been displaced.
Speaking to the inhabitants of the earthquake-stricken city of Osmaniye, Erdogan said: “You will allow us one year. Within one year, God willing, we will build these permanent houses and settle our citizens. (…) We aim to revive our villages within a year, just like our city centres.”
Undoubtedly, Erdogan realises that it will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to rebuild 270,000 housing units as he promised and remove the estimated 230 million tonnes of debris from the destroyed towns and villages, but he wants the people to believe that he is the only politician who can make this happen. He bets on the fact that the desperate people who lost their homes and loved ones would like to believe that they will return to their normal lives very soon, and thus they will vote for him and not for the opposition parties, which say that this will be done in a longer but more realistic time frame.
Although the Turkish government wants to shift blame for the collapse of so many buildings to contractors for using shoddy materials and violating the building codes, videos on social media show President Erdogan bragging in the past that “his amnesty policy removed building standards-related headaches for hundreds of thousands of citizens.” Suleyman Soylu, the Interior Minister, announced last Wednesday that 564 people had been identified in a criminal investigation into those responsible for the collapse of buildings in the earthquake area. “One hundred sixty of them have been arrested, 18 are in police custody, and 175 have been released on bail,” he added. So, in the coming days, we will see Erdogan inaugurating prefabricated housing facilities and container cities to house those rendered homeless and holding ground-breaking ceremonies for the construction of blocks of flats, probably to be awarded without public tenders to contractors who are supporters of his AKP Party.
