Erdoğan fails to deflect earthquake blame with arrests

One week after southern Turkey and northern Syria were struck by one of the most devastating earthquakes in modern history, the UN has announced that the post-quake rescue phase is “coming to a close”. 

While the death toll has surpassed 35,000 the final toll is likely to be at least double this. 

To hear that the rescue mission is winding down is in many respects alarming since it is far from “complete”. Tens of thousands of people are still missing. 

Yet the hope of pulling out many more survivors from the rubble is fading fast. With the rescue effort increasingly resembling a mass exhumation, urgency is switching to providing shelter, food and psychological support to those already rescued. An estimated 80,000 victims in Turkey are currently in hospital while over one million are in temporary shelters. 

As survivors start to reckon with what Turkey’s President Erdoğan has called the “disaster of the century,” emerging from the shock and the grief are feelings of anger at the human failings which compounded the tragic impact of this natural disaster. 

Attention in Turkey has turned to the role shoddy construction played in the staggering death toll. At least 134 arrest warrants have been issued in connection with the construction of buildings that collapsed in last week’s quake and Turkish police have already taken 12 people into custody, including building contractors, architects and engineers. The BBC reports that two contractors were detained while trying to flee from Istanbul Airport to Georgia, carrying large quantities of cash.

The arrests, however, will be seen by many as an attempt by Erdoğan to deflect blame. Experts – who warned for years that many of the country’s new buildings were unsafe – have accused Erdoğan’s government of failing to enforce the stricter construction regulations introduced following Turkey’s disastrous 1999 earthquake. The more serious accusation is that contractors have been flouting rules with the connivance of government officials.

In Turkey, politics and construction go hand-in-hand. During the last elections in 2019, Erdoğan praised the fact his AK Party had offered an amnesty to contractors who had violated the building code. The legislation didn’t require them to renovate buildings so that they met the regulations. There was even talk before the 2023 earthquake struck that Erdoğan was planning another amnesty before the May elections. 

Across the border in north-west Syria, anger has focused on just how little support has arrived. Syrians “rightly feel abandoned” by the international community, said UN aid chief, Martin Griffiths. 

But reaching those in the north-western rebel-held areas of Syria is no easy task, as Bashar al-Assad’s government is impeding access to foreign relief agencies.

Since 2014, the UN has managed to deliver aid to the millions in need in this region under a security council mandate. But it is restricted to using a single border crossing from Turkey. 

Last night, WHO chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, met Assad in Damascus and said afterwards the President was “open to considering additional cross-border access points for this emergency.” But a week on, we’re yet to see this materialise, and progress has been far too slow. 

Ankara has shown some willingness to help its neighbour when it comes to aid deliveries. Today, Turkey’s foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said his country is ready to open two new aid crossings to Syria from the Kilis province.

Yet Cavusoglu was quick to add that the border remains strictly closed for Syrians themselves. “We are facilitating humanitarian aid for Syrians, but we are not allowing a new Syrian refugee influx. These are two separate issues,” he said. 

Turkey is looking inwards because of the scale of the devastation it faces. According to a report published by the Turkish Enterprise and Business Confederation, the trail of destruction left in the wake of the quake could cost the government over £69bn.

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