One year since the earthquake in Türkiye and Syria – Part Three

This is the third and final part of the series. Part 1 was published on February 5, 2024 and Part 2 on February 6, 2024.

March 31 Local elections and impending disaster in Istanbul

With local elections being held at the end of next March, Turkey is once again entering a period in which bourgeois party candidates make promises that are known in advance to be unachievable. These elections will focus on Istanbul and the Marmara region, where 18.49 percent of the Turkish population lives and where, according to scientists, the probability of a major earthquake is very high.

Experts from the German Research Center for Geosciences (GFZ) highlighted the possibility of a 7.4 magnitude earthquake in the Sea of ​​Marmara in their research analyzing the tectonic structure of Turkey. According to Turkish professor Naci Gurur, one of Turkey's most respected seismologists, the risk of an earthquake in Istanbul at any given time is 47 percent. “It's almost like flipping a coin,” he said.

Istanbul, Turkey, from Çamlıca Hill on the Asian side of the Bosphorus [Photo by Alexxx Malev / CC BY-SA 3.0]

In another interview, he described the risks facing millions of workers in Istanbul as follows: “Simple math: There are 1.6 million buildings. Let's reduce all deaths to 1 percent in Istanbul. This means 16,000 buildings. Suppose each building has four floors. That means 64,000 floors. If we assume two apartments on each floor, this means 128 thousand apartments. Place four people in each apartment. Does it exceed 400,000? [deaths]?

In 2021, Mahir Polat, a senior official in the Istanbul municipality, said that 200,000 buildings in Istanbul are expected to suffer moderate to severe damage in the expected earthquake. Nearly three million people may be affected.

Living in Balat district in Istanbul [Photo by Jwslubbock / CC BY-SA 4.0]

This means that about 16 million people in Istanbul and 24 million people in the Marmara region still live at high risk, but there are no formal preparations to prevent a much larger disaster. This high level of disdain by the entire Turkish ruling elite towards vulnerable workers comes despite the fact that just a year ago, 60,000 people died in Turkey and Syria in official estimates in much less populated urban areas.

Under these circumstances, Murat Kurum was chosen to be the candidate of the Erdogan-led Justice and Development Party for the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality. Corome served as Minister of Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change between 2018 and 2023. Through his actions, he not only shares political responsibility for the buildings that collapsed in the February 2023 earthquake, but also for making cities and residential areas across Turkey vulnerable to new impacts. Disaster risks.

Murat Kurum visits the European Commission, September 16, 2021 [Photo by Lukasz Kobus, European Commission]

Kurum served as General Manager of Emlak Konut GYO A.Ş under the State Housing Development Administration. Between 2009 and 2018 before he became a government minister. He began his campaign with commitments titled “seismic-oriented urban transformation.” But during this period, in many cities, especially in Istanbul, landfills, coastlines, riverbeds, farmlands and military areas – which were previously prohibited for construction – were opened to development through TOKI and intensive construction activities began in these areas.

Most of the skyscrapers built in earthquake-prone Istanbul during the AKP era were built during Murat Kurum's tenure as General Manager of Emlak Konut GYO A.Ş. That someone responsible for skyscrapers and “vertical architecture” now advocates low-rise “horizontal architecture” can only be explained by the new political role given to him.

In addition, Çorum, as Minister, continued the zoning amnesty, which entered into force on 6 June 2018 with the signature of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Many buildings that collapsed in the February 6 earthquakes, killing thousands of people, benefited from this amnesty.

Earthquake damage in Hatay, Türkiye, December 2023/January 2024

The “urban transformation” carried out over four years by Ekrem Imamoglu, the current mayor of Istanbul and CHP candidate, was presented as an antidote to earthquakes. But it changed very few buildings and, like the AKP-led city administration before it, it also worked to remove working-class residents from the city center and build luxury housing for the wealthy, who made huge profits in the process.

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The period of İmamoğlu's presidency of the İmamoğlu municipality was one in which only land studies, building surveys and statistical studies regarding earthquakes were carried out, and the actual transformation was almost never carried out. While the municipality has a construction company called KIPTAŞ that can build safe and affordable homes, it refuses to do so and directs urban transformation requests to contractors. These contractors, in turn, offer to build homes at inflated prices, which applicants cannot afford in most cases. İmamoğlu presents this policy as a “public service.”

According to the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, 800,000 of Istanbul's 1.2 million buildings were built according to building and earthquake regulations before the year 2000. It is estimated that about 200,000 of these buildings will be severely damaged or demolished in the event of a major earthquake. These buildings house a total of 1.3 million households and a population of approximately 3 million people.

In Turkey, most of the population lives under the constant threat of destruction from the earthquake, including more than 24 million people in the Marmara region, which includes Istanbul. A year after the February 2023 disaster, nothing concrete has been done to ensure the safety of this huge mass of people.

Earthquake damage in Hatay, Türkiye, December 2023 January 2024

Obstacles are not natural but social. The disaster in the Marmara region, like the Maraş earthquake, will ultimately be a disaster caused by the capitalist system, which is defended by the political establishment including pseudo-left groups that lined up behind the CHP in the 2019 local elections and the 2023 presidential elections.

In order to rebuild many of the world's cities, such as Istanbul, which are threatened by natural disasters, through scientific planning and with the highest level of durability and quality of life, and in order to provide all people with the basic right to safe housing, a huge community must be created and an action plan must be implemented. But this requires a conscious political struggle for workers’ power internationally against all factions of the ruling class and the capitalist system they defend. It means the struggle for international socialism based on global planning of the economy according to the needs of society, and not for profit. The 2023 earthquake in Turkey and Syria and the inaction that followed have borne out this perspective.

I finish

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