Why was the military absence?

In 1999, a 7.4-magnitude earthquake struck near Marmara, Turkey, killing nearly 18,000 people and leaving tens of thousands injured, displaced or stranded among the crumbling rubble of their home city. The Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) mobilized immediately and, within the first 48 hours, deployed nearly 65,000 personnel to lead search and rescue, evacuation and quartering efforts. Soldiers went beyond their actual military duties to operate field hospitals, tent cities, and mobile kitchens for the affected citizens, which ultimately proved important to the country’s recovery from the disaster.

More than two decades later, another tragedy struck Turkey and parts of northern Syria in one of the deadliest earthquakes in modern history. But this time, the Turkish military spent the most important 48 hours after the disaster observing. In that time window, only about 7,500 personnel were deployed – just over a tenth of the response to the Marmara earthquake. With the death toll surpassing 41,000 in total, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s response to the disaster has received widespread criticism from all segments of Turkish society, particularly the Turkish Armed Forces’ belated and insufficient involvement in recovery efforts.

In the 21st century, countries around the world have increasingly used their militaries to respond to epidemics and natural disasters with great success. Why, then, has an opposite trend emerged in Turkey?

In 1999, a 7.4-magnitude earthquake struck near Marmara, Turkey, killing nearly 18,000 people and leaving tens of thousands injured, displaced or stranded among the crumbling rubble of their home city. The Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) mobilized immediately and, within the first 48 hours, deployed nearly 65,000 personnel to lead search and rescue, evacuation and quartering efforts. Soldiers went beyond their actual military duties to operate field hospitals, tent cities, and mobile kitchens for the affected citizens, which ultimately proved important to the country’s recovery from the disaster.

More than two decades later, another tragedy struck Turkey and parts of northern Syria in one of the deadliest earthquakes in modern history. But this time, the Turkish military spent the most crucial 48 hours after the disaster on observation. In that time window, only about 7,500 personnel were deployed – just over a tenth of the response to the Marmara earthquake. With the death toll surpassing 41,000 in total, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s response to the disaster has received widespread criticism from all segments of Turkish society, particularly the Turkish Armed Forces’ belated and insufficient involvement in recovery efforts.

In the 21st century, countries around the world have increasingly used their militaries to respond to epidemics and natural disasters with great success. Why, then, has an opposite trend emerged in Turkey?

The TSK’s slow and ineffective response was not due to its members’ lack of motivation or incompetence, but rather the radical institutional transformation that took place under Erdogan.

When Erdoğan took over as prime minister in 2003, the Turkish military enjoyed enormous power and status in the Turkish political system. Although it remained aloof from day-to-day domestic politics, it was the main force guiding anything considered a national security issue. But at the time, the military was widely seen as an obstacle to the country’s political liberalization and a threat by Islamists like Erdogan because of his staunchly secular worldview and intolerance towards political Islam.

Erdogan’s primary goals were to tame the army, which was notorious for its political meddling, as well as to outmaneuver its bureaucratic opponents. Initially, as part of the democratic reforms implemented for EU membership, he undertook a radical reform of the Turkish military, thereby gradually consolidating his control over the country’s most powerful institution, and creating a highly centralized and partisan civilian military structure.

Since 2000, the Turkish military has been effectively halved through dismissals, the jailing of thousands of officers, and broader efforts to professionalize and downsize the military. Among these reforms is the new 2019 conscription law, which shortened the obligation for mandatory military service for adult males and expanded paid exemptions from conscription, among the most important — but largely ignored.

Under Erdogan’s new bureaucratic military structure, crucial leadership positions are allocated on the basis of political loyalty, often at the expense of merit. For example, the senior leadership of the Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD), the government institution that bears primary responsibility for disaster and emergency response, is dominated by bureaucrats with no experience or expertise in the field. Furthermore, the Director General of Disaster Response, who has perhaps the most important role for this particular issue, continues to be occupied by political loyalists who are well-versed and experienced in theology and religious affairs.

Through years of reform, the Turkish military has become a smaller, more professional force made up of full-time soldiers rather than conscripts. Although it is a more controllable force politically, it is not more efficient. While this structure freed Erdogan from bureaucratic resistance and allowed him almost unlimited freedom to use military force abroad in places like Syria and Libya, it also decimated the Turkish Armed Forces’ human capital and depths of expertise, as well as creating important weaknesses in the military. Effective in both combat and non-combat duties, especially those requiring quick reactions, taking initiative, and flexibility, such as natural disasters.

Overall, the main practical goal of Erdogan’s civil and military reforms was to strip the Turkish military of its internal responsibilities and transform it into a force focused solely on external security. From 2007 to 2013 and onward from 2016 to 2018, numerous legal and structural adjustments to this end undermined the Army’s responsibility and ability to respond to natural disasters and other emergencies.

In 2009, for example, 15 provincial disaster preparedness orders—one of which was very close to the epicenter of a recent earthquake—were abolished after the creation of the Disaster and Emergency Management, a group that reports directly to the prime minister’s office. Natural disaster and assistance exercises, which were held periodically at the level of every unit in the Turkish Armed Forces since the early 2000s, were also terminated. The field medical capabilities of the Turkish Armed Forces disappeared after Erdogan relinquished the military medical command and hospitals as part of the reforms of the post-2016 coup attempt. In this short time, the Turkish military squandered the high-level preparations and experience gained from the 1999 earthquake.

With few domestic responsibilities remaining, the Turkish Armed Forces were redirected to take on more overseas missions. In 2013, the military took over most of the responsibility for border security from the gendarmerie, Turkey’s regional law enforcement agency. For Erdogan, the move was useful for warding off a potential coup because it kept the soldiers occupied and away from the capital. It did, however, spread the Turkish forces thinly and distract them from their primary combat missions and peacetime.

This focus on border security also comes as Turkey increases its involvement in many of the ongoing cross-border operations, increasing its reserves less. Currently, overseas service personnel are deployed in various countries from Syria and Iraq to Libya and Qatar, and they represent the majority of the Army’s permanent combat forces. Of the forces remaining inside the country, the bulk of them are deployed to Turkey’s southern border, leaving a limited number of military units available to intervene in disaster areas.

Despite the excessive concentration of Turkish forces in northern Syria and on the border, no units were moved to the nearby Mankouba area during the first 72 hours after the earthquake. This was mostly due to planning and coordination problems, but may also have been influenced by Erdoğan’s political calculations. Many critics believe that Erdogan is concerned that such a move would boost the military’s overall prestige and undermine its hard-won monopoly on control. Research indicates that a military that has friendly relations with its people is less likely to be manipulated and used in domestic repression efforts. Thus, any enhanced popularity gained from the disaster recovery effort would bode well for Erdogan’s authoritarian vision. He may be concerned that a venerable army sympathetic to his people may not be fully compatible with – or even challenging – his increasingly repressive regime.

Fortunately for Erdogan, the popularity of the Turkish military has declined in recent years, and social trust in the military has dropped from around 90 percent to around 60 percent in the past decade. The Turkish Army (TSK) is no longer Turkey’s most reliable state institution, and Erdogan seems content to keep it that way – even at the expense of the earthquake’s most vulnerable victims.

Erdogan has so far been able to use propaganda to cover up the Turkish military’s mediocrity in foreign interventions while making up for any shortcomings in newly discovered drone technology. But he can no longer hide the Turkish military’s structural weaknesses from view when they are exposed within its borders.

Despite being the second largest in NATO, Erdogan’s Turkish military has become an institution that struggles to carry out auxiliary but critical missions, including disaster response, when they are most needed. Erdoğan’s paranoia and harsh restructuring of Turkish institutions did not prevent the coup attempt nor did it enhance the Turkish military’s performance in the fight. Instead, as the death toll rises and the extent of the earthquake’s devastation unfolds, it is clear that most of the state’s institutions have been undermined whose primary purpose: keeping Turkish citizens safe. The Turkish people have already paid the price for their president’s obsession with central power and party control; What remains is whether Erdoğan will eventually push him as well in the upcoming elections.

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