Antakya prepares to vote amid devastating earthquake | Politics news

Antakya, Turkey – Ali Bilgin stayed in Antakya after devastating earthquakes on February 6 triggered an exodus from the city in southern Turkey.

The human rights lawyer pitched tents outside his damaged home in a southern suburb and repaired the damage himself. Some of his guests are still afraid to enter the houses, but recently he was able to climb onto the roof of the two-storey detached house and enjoy a view of the city.

Ahead of Turkey’s presidential and parliamentary elections on May 14, he has been training volunteers to serve as election observers at polling stations across the Hatay region.

“Our goal is to protect every vote,” said Bilgin, who volunteers with Oy ve Otesi (Vote and Beyond). Founded in 2014, the civil society group will send about 1,000 observers, mostly local residents, in Hatay, and tens of thousands across the country.

“We want to prevent any move that might allow the government or any political party to cast a shadow on the elections,” he told Al Jazeera. While civil society observers cannot act on any irregularities, they can alert observers from political parties at polling stations.

The elections, in which President Recep Tayyip Erdogan faces the biggest challenge to his two decades in power, are taking place three months after earthquakes devastated parts of southern Turkey and northwest Syria. Nearly 51,000 people have died in Türkiye alone.

Posters of the opposition party on a Hatay street amid earthquake damage [Ylenia Gostoli/Al Jazeera]
“We’re trying to bring them back.”

In Antakya, the scale of destruction is unparalleled anywhere else. The streets and neighborhoods are lined with dilapidated, uninhabited buildings several stories high. Many of the buildings still standing were badly damaged and would need to be demolished.

Antakya is a ghost town and holding elections will be a challenge. One major concern is how many of the 1,100,000 registered voters will be able to reach polling stations. Many residents left the city for campgrounds or nearby rural areas, while others have moved to different areas and will have to return to vote.

We have lost many of our citizens. Officially, 23,000,” said Loftu Savas, the mayor of Hatay Metropolitan Municipality and a member of the main opposition Cumhuriyet Halk Party (CHP). He told Al Jazeera that according to municipal statistics, about 475,000 people left the province, most of them from Antakya.

“Some of them, 10-15 percent, have moved their address to another city and will vote there. Most of the people who live in the city center are our [opposition] voters.” “We are trying to bring them back, but flights are not an option,” he said, referring to the closure of Hatay Airport to incoming flights, officially due to the damage to the runway.

Turkey’s Supreme Election Board (YSK) said earlier this year that only 133,000 people from the earthquake zone had re-registered to vote elsewhere. The United Nations estimates that they are among an estimated three million displaced people.

“We are organizing buses from Antalya, Mersin and Konya, but still many of them are not able to come,” Savas added.

The CHP has set up a container-based logistics coordination office in a petrol station car park on a highway outside the city.

The party’s district deputy head, Hakan Karataş, said more than 16,000 voters from 75 different cities applied for assistance to return to Hatay during the election week.

“The elections could have been postponed, or the city given a special status,” Karatas said, reflecting a sentiment expressed by many displaced voters across Turkey, who believe they should have voted for the local member of parliament in Hatay without having to go through the logistical challenges of returning. .

On May 6, the government’s disaster relief agency, AFAD, announced assistance for those who wish to return to the quake zone to vote.

Destruction of a building destroyed by earthquakes in Antakya [Ylenia Gostoli/Al Jazeera]
Back to vote only

Officials said that while noisy rallies are taking place across the country, there are no large rallies and no songs blaring from buses in the quake zone, where campaigning is limited to meetings with citizens.

Much of the region has historically been a stronghold of the sitting president – and there is no indication that the earthquake has significantly weakened that support. However, Hatay is a competitive region, with Erdoğan’s party, the Justice and Development Party (AKP), holding five seats, followed by the CHP’s four.

Erdogan promised to rebuild millions of homes within a year. The opposition said it aims to reverse the president’s unorthodox economic policies, which are largely blamed for the free fall of the Turkish lira against the dollar and runaway inflation. She also vowed to abandon the presidential system introduced after the 2017 referendum and return Turkey to parliamentary democracy.

In the old part of Antakya, the site of the ancient city of Antakya, the cobbled streets of Roman times and Ottoman mosques are largely in ruins. The famous Saray Street is a pile of rubble that has hardly been moved since the earthquakes.

Some shops in the old bazaar have reopened. Umut, 28, was sitting in a phone repair shop that his friend had recently set up. He returned from Ankara a week after the elections.

“I think we need to change,” he said, adding that he couldn’t be too optimistic.

“Look at this,” he added, pointing to the rubble as the bulldozers were still moving. Plan to leave again after the election.

“I think I will go to Eskisehir [a city in northwest Turkey]For a year or two, he said, “I’ll do anything, any job. When I feel better myself, I’ll be back.”

While half of Turkey’s citizens look to the coming days with hope for a turning point in their country’s history, the people of Antakya look back at their ruined city and wonder how long it will take before it is rebuilt.

“Our house was badly damaged and will have to be demolished,” said Hakan Kam, a 41-year-old security guard who lives with his wife Ayfer, their 10-year-old son and mother-in-law Zahide in a tent. Camp on the outskirts of the city.

Zahida said: “Thank God, we are alive.” “But we have nothing, there is nothing left.”

While the camp appears relatively clean and tidy, hygiene remains an issue as over 200 tents are pitched here.

“On Sunday I will drive Iver to the polling station,” said Kam, who unlike his wife voted for the ruling party in the past. “I will be there. But this year, I won’t vote.”

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