{"id":29547,"date":"2023-02-10T03:53:06","date_gmt":"2023-02-10T03:53:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/?p=29547"},"modified":"2023-02-10T03:53:07","modified_gmt":"2023-02-10T03:53:07","slug":"erdogan-slow-response-to-the-earthquake-tarnish-his-brand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/2023\/02\/10\/erdogan-slow-response-to-the-earthquake-tarnish-his-brand\/","title":{"rendered":"Erdogan slow response to the earthquake tarnish his brand"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The gleaming black sedan wound through the epicentre of Turkey\u2019s deadly earthquake in the town of Pazarc\u0131k. Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan\u2019s car glistened in the sunlight as the Turkish president passed citizens burning fires to keep warm in the freezing cold among towering piles of rubble that were once their homes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Erdo\u011fan limited his interactions with the public in Pazarc\u0131k, instead driving directly to the local police headquarters to discuss the aftermath of the multiple massive tremors that left a trail of destruction over 10 Turkish provinces and across northern Syria, trapping people underneath collapsed buildings and killing more than 20,000. When he did stop to speak briefly to the area\u2019s shattered and distraught residents, it was to double down on the notion that the quake was solely responsible for the devastation, rather than poorly constructed buildings linked to corruption, or a\u00a0rescue response\u00a0beset by delays.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat happens, happens, this is part of fate\u2019s plan,\u201d he told one person in Pazarc\u0131k, echoing his statements just months earlier after a\u00a0deadly mining disaster\u00a0at a state-run coalmine, where the president blamed \u201cfate\u2019s design\u201d, for an explosion that left at least 41 dead. During a speech in nearby Kahramanmara\u015f, Erdo\u011fan also lashed out at \u201cprovocateurs\u201d who criticised rescue efforts, adding: \u201cOf course, there are shortcomings. The conditions are clear to see. It\u2019s not possible to be ready for a disaster like this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

People who lined the streets of Pazarc\u0131k sobbing as they waited to see their dead relatives pulled from the rubble \u2013 rather than to catch a glimpse of the president\u2019s motorcade \u2013 disagreed, as did those in other badly hit towns, who\u00a0shouted angrilyat Turkey\u2019s infrastructure minister and a local official during a visit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Man
Many in Pazarc\u0131k are still holding on to hope that relatives can be rescued from the rubble. Photograph: Alessio Mamo\/The Guardian<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf there was more help, they\u2019d manage to get them out,\u201d said Ay\u015fe Kep, staring across the main road in Pazarc\u0131k as a small team of rescue workers clambered atop slabs of broken concrete and metal that once made up a residential building, a crushed flatbed truck protruding from the wreckage. Kep and other residents watched desperately in the faint hope that their family members might somehow be found alive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe are here to wait for the funerals,\u201d she said grimly. \u201cI only have hope, but I still don\u2019t believe they\u2019re alive. My cousin is under there, and these rescue workers didn\u2019t arrive until today. But it\u2019s worse in my village, there\u2019s no electricity or water, no help at all.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Erdo\u011fan\u2019s refusal to accept criticism of the state\u2019s response <\/strong>has done little to quell growing public anger at a disaster response that has often arrived too late, or in the case of some remote villages, appears yet to have arrived at all. Across southern Turkey \u2013 areas traditionally considered bastions of support for the president and his Justice and Development party (AKP) \u2013 displaced citizens surviving in freezing conditions complained openly about delays and sleeping in the cold despite the state\u2019s promises . Their increasing discontent represents an unforeseen and major test for Erdo\u011fan\u2019s 20-year leadership, just three months prior to an election expected in May.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"People
People warm themselves around a fire in Pazarc\u0131k.Photograph: Suhaib Salem\/Reuters<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cErdo\u011fan has an image he\u2019s cultivated in the last 20 years, it\u2019s both sweet and sour: he\u2019s autocratic, but effective, a patriarchal figure almost replacing what used to be called devlet baba<\/em>, the fatherly state. This is why his base loves him and his opponents fear him \u2013 his wrath is serious as much as his compassion is real. That\u2019s his whole brand, which is now being tested,\u201d said Soner Cagaptay of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and author of several books on Erdo\u011fan\u2019s leadership. \u201cIt\u2019s remarkable as Erdo\u011fan replaced another overarching, autocratic fatherly state which essentially collapsed following another massive earthquake in 1999.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The state\u2019s lacklustre response to the\u00a01999 \u0130zmit earthquake\u00a0helped propel Erdo\u011fan and the AKP to power in 2003, where the young and enigmatic figure promised efficiency and care to heal the country\u2019s wounds following a disaster that killed over 17,000 people. The \u0130zmit earthquake, which destroyed part of Istanbul and loomed large over Turkey\u2019s recent history as the country\u2019s largest natural disaster until this week, prompted the introduction of a tax to provide economic support after disasters, which experts\u00a0estimated\u00a0to total about \u00a33.8bn \u2013 raising questions from opposition politicians as to how that money has been spent in the years since.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The two-decade reign of the AKP has been marked by a nationwide construction boom, as Erdo\u011fan worked to transform a country once beset by widespread infrastructure and housing issues, promising economic and social transformation in the process. In the years immediately following his election, government permits for\u00a0housing construction tripled. Skyscrapers, bridges and smooth tarmac roads spread across the vast country, as a handful of construction companies with ties to the government grew powerful while the new infrastructure demonstrated the state\u2019s presence even in the most remote cities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many of the same concrete apartment blocks built as part of the AKP\u2019s construction boom were razed to the ground by the earthquake earlier this week. In Kahramanmara\u015f, some of the new towers remained standing while others on the same block had collapsed entirely, a grim showcase of which constructions had conformed to building codes intended to prevent them from collapse in the event of tremors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Pazarc\u0131k
Pazarc\u0131k, where many of the concrete apartment blocks built as part of the AKP\u2019s construction boom were razed to the ground. Photograph: Alessio Mamo\/The Guardian<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

During a speech in the town, Erdo\u011fan promised that new homes to replace destroyed buildings would be constructed across the 10 affected regions within a year, a pledge that appeared hard to fathom as emergency teams struggled to pick through towering piles of rubble with little prospect of clearing it in sight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead, the message from the presidential palace appears to be one born of fear and control in the quake\u2019s aftermath, amid reports\u00a0that Turkey briefly blocked Twitter, which citizens had been using to locate lost loved ones amid the rubble. On state television, a reporter turned her back on a person in Kahramanmara\u015f who described delays in aid delivery, instead reassuring viewers that \u201cthere are still places workers are unable to reach\u201d in the town. After touring areas destroyed by the quake and its aftershocks, Erdo\u011fan described the state of emergency allowing him to bypass the rule of law in the 10 affected regions as \u201can opportunity to foil moneylenders and seditious groups who abuse due process in Turkey\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cagaptay said the presidency had opted to focus on control, rather than compassion. \u201cThe argument that Turkey needs an effective if autocratic leader falls apart if people say the state isn\u2019t there when they need it,\u201d he said. \u201cHis base is going to have a hard time accepting the autocratic part of his political identity without effective relief after the earthquake.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He added: \u201cHe\u2019s trying to double down on the fear factor in the hope it doesn\u2019t vanish, as once it goes away and citizens aren\u2019t afraid of Erdo\u011fan, that\u2019s a very different Turkey.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Pazarc\u0131k, Kep looked on despondently as she watched mechanical diggers and volunteers continue to scrabble among the remains of her relatives\u2019 apartment block. She turned to warm herself by a small fire surrounded by mourning people. \u201cNo one is helping us,\u201d she said, moments before the president\u2019s motorcade passed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The gleaming black sedan wound through the epicentre of Turkey\u2019s deadly earthquake in the town of Pazarc\u0131k. Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan\u2019s car glistened in the sunlight as the Turkish president passed citizens burning fires to keep warm in the freezing cold among towering piles of rubble that were once their homes. Erdo\u011fan limited his interactions with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":29548,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[4791,6850,1546,6573,10446,13175,7960,11555,8257,7711,9233,1384,6083,12326,11356,12635,8116,5846,7280,911,5800,8854,5455,8057,6159,2264,10598,11715,2702,8995,5539,10419,9515,10454,10342,9974,10634,7795,5612,11973,12901,6027,421,11698,7574,3805,11377,5462,10041,11533,3349,1502,2485,2570,3151,5350,6348,2354,8869,594,5140],"class_list":["post-29547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news","tag-abuse","tag-aid","tag-baba","tag-black","tag-burning","tag-car","tag-case","tag-citizens","tag-coalmine","tag-cold","tag-collapse","tag-corruption","tag-dead","tag-decade","tag-delays","tag-delivery","tag-destruction","tag-displaced","tag-earthquake","tag-election","tag-electricity","tag-explosion","tag-family","tag-fear","tag-fire","tag-government","tag-homes","tag-housing","tag-identity","tag-infrastructure","tag-istanbul","tag-justice","tag-killed","tag-killing","tag-law","tag-leadership","tag-lost","tag-mining","tag-money","tag-one","tag-permits","tag-pledge","tag-police","tag-politicians","tag-presidency","tag-president","tag-presidential","tag-residential","tag-speech","tag-state-of-emergency","tag-syria","tag-tax","tag-truck","tag-turkey","tag-turkeys-president-recep-tayyip-erdogan","tag-twitter","tag-us","tag-washington","tag-water","tag-who","tag-young"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29547\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}