The death toll reached 40,000 on Wednesday and would continue to worsen massively, warned the UN, more than a week after the devastating 7.8 magnitude earthquake in Turkey and Syria. In Turkey, where it hit hardest, the earthquake, shortly followed by a second of magnitude 6.5, swept through a huge densely populated area (14 million people) in the southeast and spread produced on the surface, less than 18 km deep, thus amplifying the destruction. The disaster is immense. Nevertheless: if earthquakes are impossible to predict precisely, the magnitude of the impacts of these earthquakes, on the human and material levels, was not necessarily inevitable, contrary to what was suggested by authoritarian President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
In August 1999, the Izmit earthquake, which was felt as far away as Istanbul, caused 17,000 deaths and highlighted the lack of foresight, not to say criminal negligence, which was rampant in the Turkish construction industry, with many often the complicity of the authorities. Non-desalinated sea sand notably entered the concrete used in the construction of buildings, thus making the cement more friable. Contractors have been prosecuted, and promises have been made to tighten anti-seismic standards, given the epidemic of illegal construction.
Twenty-four years later, nothing seems to have changed, or very little: accusations of corruption and non-compliance of the new building with anti-seismic standards are once again raining down. An aggravating factor: the tendency, as in many countries, to limit urban sprawl, to build tall buildings, which are necessarily more vulnerable to earthquakes. The Turks are now all the more nervous about what is happening to them as specialists expect a major earthquake to occur near the Sea of Marmara and, therefore, near Istanbul, a region city of 15 million inhabitants.
This corruption and negligence are fatally attributable to Erdoğan who, having come to power in 2003, built his popularity on an economic boom which also involved a real estate boom favoring large companies linked to the government. In the repressive and poisonous political climate that has become that of Erdoğan’s Turkey, angry Turks today have the courage to point the finger. It does not help matters for the President that, in the face of the disaster, the government relief services are suffering from a flagrant lack of coordination and competence, while the cold is raging and there is an urgent need to feed and provide home to over a million people. Politically, Erdoğan therefore finds himself weakened three months before the presidential election currently set for May 14 and in which he intends to stand again by using parliamentary pirouettes, while the letter if not the spirit of the Constitution barred him from running for a third term.
He was already no longer, for the first time in twenty years, the undisputed favorite in the polls, given the deep economic crisis from which the country is not emerging, burdened by inflation above 60%. The earthquake further complicates his re-election. It will not be enough for Erdoğan to identify a few scapegoats to get a political makeover. The Turks are not fooled. It’s a whole system that should be called into question.
The Izmit earthquake had caused, on the political level, tectonic movements which had favored the election of Erdoğan’s AKP in the 2002 legislative elections. An Islamoconservative to whom many gave his chance, the man slowly worked , but surely, to unravel the state apparatus, to co-opt the institutions, to bribe the courts and to transform a large part of the media into instruments of propaganda. Many of his critics have been thrown in jail, now including Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, one of his main rivals in an otherwise divided opposition. His autocratic drift is obvious. From one earthquake to another, the risk is real that Erdoğan maneuvers to retain power through elections that are less transparent than ever.