Credit, Reuters
The Turkish government acknowledges that there were problems with the initial response to the tragedy, but says that rescue operations have now returned to normal.
Amidst the tragedy, discontent grows in Turkey over the government’s response to the consequences of a series of devastating earthquakes that hit the country and neighboring Syria on Monday (06/02).
Both opposition politicians and the population affected by the tremors blame the Turkish government for what they see as a faltering response and failure to prepare for the disaster.
Meanwhile, the death toll from the earthquakes exceeds 11,200 in both countries, according to the most recent report released on Wednesday (08/02).
In Turkey, the death toll is around 8,500, with the prospect of fatalities continuing to rise.
Accurate records from Syria are hard to come by, but confirmed deaths so far add up to 2,662.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan acknowledged that there were problems with the initial response, but says rescue operations are now proceeding normally.
“Initially there were problems at the airports and on the roads, but today things are getting easier and tomorrow they will be even easier,” said Erdogan, who traveled to the south of the country on Wednesday to visit the disaster zone.
“We’ve mobilized all our resources,” he added. “The state is doing its job.”
“It is impossible to prepare for a disaster of this magnitude,” Erdogan stressed in response to the criticism.
Credit, EPA
President Erdogan traveled on Wednesday to the city of Kahramanmaras, 40 km from the epicenter of the disaster.
Damaged roads made it more difficult to transport assistance to rural areas and survivors had to endure the freezing temperatures of the Turkish winter without shelter.
“We survived the earthquake, but here we will die of hunger or cold,” said a 64-year-old man in Antakya, Hatay province.
The Turkish Red Crescent, Turkey’s largest humanitarian organisation, said it was doing all it could, bringing food, tents and blankets to the affected areas.
In some of the worst-affected regions, families complain that they have not been helped to clear rubble in search of their relatives, amid the slow pace of rescue efforts.
‘Too late’
On Tuesday, in the port of Iskenderum in southern Turkey, resident Arzu Dedeoglu said her two nieces were trapped under the ruins.
Her family hired an excavator with their own resources to remove the rubble, but she accuses the authorities of not allowing the use of the equipment.
“We waited until late at night, but nobody showed up,” said Dedeoglu. “We brought an excavator with our own means, but they wouldn’t let us use it, they stopped us. We have two girls under the rubble: my sister’s daughters, Ayşegül and İlayda.”
“We already lost them, we lost them.”
Credit, EPA
Iskenderun is one of the cities most affected by the series of earthquakes
When emergency services finally arrived, Dedeoglu yelled at them that it was “too late”. Rescuers stopped for a moment, but the girls’ family begged them not to stop.
“Please don’t go away, maybe my daughters are still alive”, the mother begged.
Lack of preparation?
While many question the government’s slow response to the earthquake, others argue that the country was not sufficiently prepared to respond to the tragedy.
“If there’s one person responsible for this, it’s Erdogan,” says Kemal Kilicdaroglu, leader of the main opposition party.
Erdogan announced a three-month state of emergency in the 10 provinces most affected by the earthquake. It will end shortly before May 14, when the president will seek to remain in power after 20 years in charge of the country.
Its main opposition is an alliance of centre-left and right-wing parties known as the Mesa dos Seis. Kilicdaroglu is expected to be the opposition presidential candidate.
Kilicdaroglu also said that Erdogan’s government “has not prepared for an earthquake in 20 years”.
The BBC has seen examples of newly constructed buildings, in principle following strict rules for earthquake prevention, which collapsed in Turkey after Monday’s disaster.
A building in Malatya was completed last year and was advertised, according to screenshots shared in recent days on social media, as “completed in accordance with the latest earthquake regulations”. The advertisement claimed that all materials and workmanship used were of “first class quality”.
Another apartment block opened in 2019 in the port city of Iskenderun was largely destroyed. The BBC verified that the image of the destroyed building corresponds to the location portrayed in a publicity photo of the construction company responsible for the work.
Before and after: recently opened building was almost completely destroyed in Iskanderun
Already a building opened in 2019 in Antakya can be seen badly destroyed in an image verified by the BBC. We found a video of the opening ceremony in which a construction company owner says, “The Guclu Bahce City project is particularly special compared to others because of its location and the quality of construction.”
Although the earthquakes were strong, geographer David Alexander claims that properly constructed buildings should have been able to stand.
“The maximum intensity of this earthquake was violent, but not necessarily enough to topple well-constructed buildings,” says Alexander, professor of emergency planning and management at University College London.
“In most places, the tremor level was less than the maximum, so we can conclude that of the thousands of buildings that collapsed, almost all of them did not meet any reasonably expected earthquake building codes.”
Construction rules have been changed disaster after disaster, most recently in 2018. These laws, however, have been poorly enforced.
“Part of the problem is that there is very little retrofitting of existing buildings, but also very little application of building standards in new construction,” says Alexander.
The government has also granted successive “building amnesties”—legalized exemptions from paying a fee for structures built without the required safety certificates.
Up to 75,000 buildings in the earthquake-affected area of southern Turkey were given building amnesties, according to Pelin Pınar Giritlioğlu, representative of a committee of engineers, architects and urban planners.
Just a few days before the latest disaster, Turkish media reported that a bill could give new amnesty for recently opened works.
At the beginning of the year, geologist Celal Sengor said that approving such amnesties in a country located on geological faults was the equivalent of a “crime”.
After a deadly earthquake hit Izmir in 2020, a Turkish BBC report found that 672,000 buildings in the province had benefited from an anist.
The same report cited an estimate by the Ministry of the Environment that, in 2018, more than 50% of buildings in the country — the equivalent of 13 million buildings — were built in violation of regulations.
‘Where did our taxes go?’
Credit, Getty Images
Erdogan is repeatedly criticized for his government’s lack of disaster preparedness
Anger is also growing over an “earthquake response tax” levied by the Turkish government after the devastating 1999 earthquake that killed more than 17,000 people.
It is estimated that around US$4.6 billion (R$23.9 billion) has been raised for disaster prevention and the development of emergency services.
Every time there is an earthquake in Turkey, questions arise about the tax, but the government has never publicly explained how the money is spent.
“Where did all our taxes, collected since 1999, go?”, asked Celel Deniz, quoted by the AFP agency in the city of Gaziantep. Her brother and nephews remain trapped under rubble.
Social media users also criticized some pro-government television channels for “silence” the grievances of people in the affected areas.
Several videos have been shared online in which reporters appear to turn a deaf ear to “Where’s the State?” and “Audience is inadequate”, cutting to the studio.
President Erdogan traveled to the city of Kahramanmaras, also known as Maras, about 40 kilometers from the quake’s epicenter.
There, he met with survivors and said initial difficulties were due to damage to roads and airports.
He recommended that people listen only to authorities’ communications and ignore “inciters”.