One year after the earthquakes in Turkey, Erdogan's promises collide with facts

The trauma is still alive for millions of Turks. One year after the earthquake that devastated the southeast of the country, causing the death of more than 53,000 peoplemany of those affected remain shaken by the 7.8 magnitude earthquake, described by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as the “disaster of the century.”

That night, 53,537 people in Türkiye, according to the latest official figures published on Friday, were trapped in a matter of seconds, while they were sleeping, under piles of cement. With the 6,000 deaths recorded in neighboring Syria, the official death toll rose to almost 60,000 and more than 100,000 injured.

“A year has passed, but this does not abandon us,” Cagla Demirel, 31, told AFP from one of the tent cities set up in Antioch. The ancient city of Antioch, capital of the province of Hatay, on the border with Syria, is 90% destroyed. “Life has lost all interest (…) I have no family to visit, no door to knock on, no nice place to live. I have nothing left,” he laments.

In Turkey, an estimated 14 million people were affected by the double earthquake on February 6, which shook 11 of the country's poorest provinces.

The pain of survivors

“It is a disaster whose immensity we have been realizing little by little, as we see how difficult it is to resume certain economic activities. In a way, it is a catastrophe that is not yet over,” says Jean Marcou, professor of Sciences Po Grenoble and associate researcher at the French Institute of Anatolian Studies in Istanbul.

In total, more than 100,000 buildings have collapsed, 2.3 million have been damaged and 700,000 people live in containers or tents due to lack of accommodation. A year after the earthquake, the new buildings promised by the Government are slow to rise from the ground, and only the rubble has been almost completely removed.

The day after the earthquake, President Erdogan promised 650,000 new homes for those affected. But 12 months later, only half of them have been built, with 46,000 ready to be delivered, according to the Ministry of Environment and Urban Development.

During a visit on February 3 to Hatay, one of the cities most affected by the earthquake, the head of state handed over the keys to the first 7,000 homes to families selected by lottery, a far cry from the figures announced during the campaign.

A situation that is fueling the resentment of some of the survivors, already tired by the slowness of aid in the days after the catastrophe. To demonstrate their feeling of abandonment, the survivors of Antioquia, who have formed the 'Platform February 6', plan to meet on Tuesday at 4:17 in the morning, the time of the earthquake, to shout “Does anyone hear us?” and symbolically relive their despair on the night of the tragedy.

Those responsible could be free

For his part, President Erdogan is trying to respond to the impatience of the affected population, promising to deliver “between 15,000 and 20,000 homes per month” and asking his fellow citizens to “trust the State and have confidence in it.”

But this meager balance of reconstruction is not the only cause of anger among the survivors. Immediately after the earthquake, the role of real estate developers, accused of using low-quality materials in a seismic zone, was at the center of public debate.

In the weeks after the earthquake, 260 of them were detained, in some cases while trying to flee Turkey. But lawyers for the victims' families fear that many will escape justice, since some of the evidence against them has disappeared under the bulldozers.

“While everyone was concentrating on their dead relatives, the evidence was being eliminated and the rubble was being removed,” Ömer Gödeoglu, a defense lawyer for the families who filed a complaint against Tevfik Tepebasi, one of the main contractors of the organization, told AFP. Ebrar urbanization, in Kahramanmaras, where almost twenty eight-story buildings collapsed, killing 1,400 people.

In court, the company director pleaded not guilty, even claiming in his defense that he knew “nothing” about construction regulations and blaming his teams. This argument caused an uproar in the room. He faces up to 22 and a half years in prison if he is convicted of causing death or injury by negligence.

Furthermore, of the few proceedings that have been initiated in the last 12 months, none have been against corrupt officials or politicians who issued building permits in breach of urban planning regulations.

“Despite this, we cannot say that anything has changed,” says Jean Marcou. “There has been an increase in awareness, especially through projects to make Istanbul buildings safer, but the task is colossal and goes beyond the measures that can be taken. There is a culture of risk that must be assimilated “in a country with two great weaknesses.

Local elections on the horizon

President Erdogan's responsibility for the catastrophe had been raised by his detractors. At a rally held in Kahramanmaras in 2019, the Turkish head of state welcomed a controversial amnesty law passed the previous year, which regularized almost six million illegally built homes across the country. This legislation may have contributed to the increase in the number of victims.

Re-elected in May 2023 for a third term despite criticism of the AKP and the authorities' management of the crisis, could Recep Tayyp Erdogan pay politically for the consequences of the earthquake? Municipal elections are scheduled for March 31, less than a year after his re-election as head of state and his landslide victory in the parliamentary elections.

“There is certainly anger, but it is difficult to know how it will be expressed at the polls,” says Jean Marcou. “Although the context is not very favorable to the AKP (the Islamonationalist Justice and Development Party) with the economic crisis, the opposition goes to battle divided, unlike in the previous elections.” In 2019, the presidential party lost the capital, Ankara, and Istanbul, the country's largest city, of which Recep Tayyp Erdogan had been mayor in the 1990s.

“In addition, the most central part of the disaster took place in areas that were very favorable to the Government. The province of Kahramanmaras, in particular, voted 70% for Erdogan in the presidential elections,” adds the expert. “When you look at these results, you can't say that the earthquake had much influence. Beyond anger, there is also a form of fatalism and great resistance on the part of the Turkish people,” adds Marcou.

Adapted from its French original