Political fault lines in Turkey exposed due to government opposition to anti-earthquake measures

Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its junior partner in parliament, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), have voted against legislation proposed by the pro-Kurdish opposition to better prepare the country for earthquakes, Bergun said Thursday.

The pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party submitted the bill after a 6.6-magnitude earthquake struck the western province of Izmir last week, killing at least 114 people and destroying more than a dozen buildings.

In response, three HDP members on the Parliamentary Budget Committee proposed increasing the Ministry of Education’s budget to fortify school buildings and allocating financial resources to employ an additional 200,000 teachers.

Bergon said reinforcing school buildings would cost 10 billion lira ($ 1.18 billion) and employ another 20 billion lira ($ 2.36 billion).

“There are hundreds of thousands of teachers waiting to be appointed,” Jarrow Paylan, one of the HDP politicians, said at the committee meeting. “Some have committed suicide.”

The rejection of the measure confirms Turkey’s growing political division. The legislation is the latest in a long line of opposition proposals that the AKP rejects without the government proposing anything in its place. The AKP’s relations with the HDP are particularly tense, with dozens of officials from the pro-Kurdish party arrested on terrorism charges in recent years under a government crackdown.

Paylan told Bergon that the education minister had approved the opposition, but the budget committee members from the AKP and the MHP voted against the proposal.

“It is possible to increase the ministry’s budget if the resources allocated to the presidential palace and the flatterers are partially reduced,” Paylan said.

Turkey has two major seismic fault lines running the length of the country, including through the predominantly Kurdish southeast, and is therefore prone to severe earthquakes. Three of the four deadliest earthquakes worldwide this year occurred in and around Turkey, and the country was home to 85 percent of earthquake-related deaths in 2020.

An earthquake in the eastern province of Elazig killed 41 people in January. More than 500 people were killed in the 2011 earthquake in Van Province, near the Iranian border. Another massive earthquake in northwest Izmit / Duzce region killed 18,000 people in August 1999, the repercussions of which are still being felt today.

The 1999 earthquake was among the main destabilizing factors for the coalition government at the time, led by the center-left. Along with the 2001 financial crisis, the disaster paved the way for the AKP’s first election victory in November 2002, marking the start of 18 uninterrupted years in government.

Since then, Turkey has been discussing how to deal with a potential earthquake in the mega-city of Istanbul, which has a population of 16 million. Experts say the nearby fault line in North Anatolia has the potential to produce tremors of magnitude 7.0 and above. Geologist Nasi Gur said that the next major earthquake in the city is likely to have a magnitude of at least 7.3.

The Istanbul Planning Agency (IPA), an initiative launched by the metropolitan city municipality, estimated that at least 48,000 buildings would be severely damaged in a 7.5-magnitude earthquake, while 194,000 others would register at least moderate-severity damage and the IPA said the city would lose 120 billion liras (14.2) Billion dollars) immediately after such an earthquake. The human cost will be higher.

If caught unprepared for an earthquake, in a 7.5 magnitude earthquake in Istanbul;

● 48 thousand buildings will be demolished or severely damaged, ● 194 thousand buildings in the center and above will be destroyed, ● 30% of the roads will be closed, ● An economic loss of 120 billion Turkish liras will be incurred. pic.twitter.com/s9tPg3Pn4i

– Istanbul Planning Agency (ipaistanbul) November 4, 2020

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