How could the earthquake in Turkey affect Erdogan’s election prospects?

Antakya, Turkey – The initial shock from the biggest earthquake to hit Turkey in the past 100 years has turned into rage. Just as fragile buildings have collapsed in southern Turkey, so could the government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Turkish elections come in May. What happened earlier was a storm of destruction. At least 35,000 people died in the disaster – a natural disaster as well as a construction disaster. Although infrastructure and development have been the main selling points of Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) to its constituencies over the past 20 years, shoddy construction could actually make it fall apart.

Ankara is chasing the builders. In what some said was a smokescreen, Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay announced on Saturday that 131 suspects linked to building collapses had been identified in 10 provinces. So far, 113 arrest warrants have been issued and 12 people have been detained, including the developer of a 12-storey apartment complex that collapsed in Antakya and was detained at Istanbul airport before boarding a flight to Montenegro on Friday. Of the 170,000 buildings assessed across the affected area, 24,921 collapsed or were severely damaged, according to Turkey’s Environment Minister Murat Kurum.

Antakya, Turkey – The initial shock from the biggest earthquake to hit Turkey in the past 100 years has turned into rage. Just as fragile buildings have collapsed in southern Turkey, so could the government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Turkish elections come in May. What happened earlier was a storm of destruction. At least 35,000 people died in the disaster – a natural disaster as well as a construction disaster. Although infrastructure and development have been the main selling points of Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) to its constituencies over the past 20 years, shoddy construction could actually make it fall apart.

Ankara is chasing the builders. In what some said was a smokescreen, Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay announced on Saturday that 131 suspects linked to building collapses had been identified in 10 provinces. So far, 113 arrest warrants have been issued and 12 people have been detained, including the developer of a 12-storey apartment complex that collapsed in Antakya and was detained at Istanbul airport before boarding a flight to Montenegro on Friday. Of the 170,000 buildings assessed across the affected area, 24,921 collapsed or were severely damaged, according to Turkey’s Environment Minister Murat Kurum.

Before the 7.8-magnitude earthquake, which also killed thousands in northern Syria, the focus of Turkey’s election was on the usual suspects: a terrible economy and thriving immigrants. Now, though, a critical lens is being trained on belated relief efforts, the so-called lost or misused earthquake tax, and a now-deadly building boom rooted in nepotism.

When Erdogan spoke to those affected in Kahramanmaras, near the epicenter in southern Turkey on Wednesday, he attributed the destruction and casualties to a “plan of fate”, dismissing any criticism of the slow relief efforts. Erdogan also condemned those who criticize the efforts and said, “We cannot be prepared for such a disaster.”

But scientists have long warned that a major earthquake was delayed in Turkey. Legislation was passed to try to prepare for the devastation of the 1999 earthquake almost as well – the earthquake that fortuitously toppled the government – but it was either ignored or exploited.

Erdogan’s government passed a zoning amnesty law in 2018 that allowed any property built without a permit or in violation of building permits or zoning laws to obtain a building certificate and avoid demolition. Turkey was definitely not Tokyo when it came to earthquakes.

“Croné capitalism has percolated into many Turkish structures, at enormous societal cost,” said Liesel Hintz of Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. The humanitarian crisis in Turkey is ‘partly man-made’.

Falling buildings have left at least a million people homeless. Meanwhile, bricks and fallen timber are easy to spot; Spying on rescue teams was much more difficult. The slow deployment of rescue teams to destroyed homes has sparked outrage across the provinces. People sleep in the streets – collecting wood from collapsed buildings for fires to keep warm – because there are no temporary shelters erected by disaster response teams. The transition to a presidential system has bred sclerosis. For example, it took two days to see military aid on the streets.

“The scale of death and destruction is beyond the capacity of Turkey’s resources, and the reality is that every country has a limited number of resources,” said Yusuf Erim, an Ankara-based political analyst at TRT World.

Turkey has been here before. The government of Turkey’s then prime minister, Bulent Ecevit, reacted poorly after the 7.6-magnitude İzmit earthquake in 1999, which killed more than 17,000 people and heralded Erdogan as president. That is now looming over the AKP leader as he faces the May 14 elections.

The slow response in 1999 sparked anger among the survivors, which was exacerbated by the unsafe building in which he lived. The rapid expansion over the past two decades — which has seen new bridges, malls, mosques, skyscrapers (and, of course) the government-backed Housing Development Administration (TOKI) pop up everywhere — now seems to have a price.

The arrest warrants appear to be too little, too late for the tens of thousands of victims, especially when building codes – which they say meet seismic engineering standards in Turkey – are not being enforced.

There is always sharp political polarization in Turkey, especially around election time, often between supporters of the AKP and the main opposition party, the Social Democratic Republican People’s Party. This time, however, the same kind of fissures that have ripped apart southern Turkey threaten Erdogan.

According to Erim, the earthquake made all previous polls irrelevant. “Every party has a clean record of three months, and its performance during this period will determine the outcome of the May elections,” he said.

Of the ten quake-hit provinces, six have traditionally been AKP strongholds. In the 2018 elections in Adiyaman, one of the cities hardest hit by the earthquake, the AKP won 70 percent of the vote. There has been criticism that the city of Hatay, near Turkey’s border with Syria, has received less aid or support since its votes usually go to the opposition.

Given the devastation caused by the earthquake, there is a possibility that the elections will not take place in May, due to the inability to organize the vote. “There are no addresses anymore,” said Sinem Adar of the Center for Applied Turkey Studies in Berlin.

Postponing the election would play into the government’s hands, giving it more time to catch up with supporters again. But according to the constitution, the vote cannot be delayed for more than a month. Only when the war caused the emergency could it be postponed for a longer period; Therefore, the state of emergency declared by Turkey due to the earthquake is not eligible.

Once elections begin, “construction as a manifestation of the government’s ability to deliver,” Adar said, is a narrative that can no longer be used. It will also be difficult for Erdogan to promote a “strong” Turkey independent of the West, given the influx of international aid needed to deal with the aftermath of the earthquake.

“The earthquake in itself, similar to the economic crisis, will not in itself be the end of the Erdogan regime, but it will certainly weaken the legitimacy of the current ruling coalition,” Adar said.

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