Tag: earthquake in Kahramanmaras

  • Earthquake Damage and Corruption Are Intertwined in Erdogan’s Turkey

    Earthquake Damage and Corruption Are Intertwined in Erdogan’s Turkey

    With each passing day, the number of victims of the earthquake in Turkey is increasing. Our heart goes out to the nearly 50,000 dead and close to 200,000 injured as of now. The ancient city of Antioch (Antakya) with a population of 250,000 has been mostly reduced to rubble.

    As I wrote last week, Armenians should distinguish between the Turkish government that committed the Genocide and the Turkish people who played no role in this mass crime. Not one of today’s Turks was alive in 1915.

    In recent days, hundreds of articles have been written by journalists from around the world pointing out that Pres. Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s corrupt practices increased the toll of the disaster manifold. Erdogan who came to power in 2003 as a devout Muslim has turned into a corrupt dictator. As it is said, “power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Many Turks blame Erdogan personally for the large number of deaths and the collapse or damage of over 100,000 buildings which were poorly-constructed by the President’s cronies. At least one million people have been left homeless in Turkey.

    Let’s start with the earthquake tax that the Turkish government established after the earthquake in 1999 which had caused the deaths of 17,000 people in Turkey. In 2021, by a presidential decree, the tax was increased from 7.5% to 10% on all private communication. The billions of dollars raised through this tax were used to fund construction, transport and agricultural projects, instead of the intended purposes of reinforcing buildings and disaster prevention.

    Reuters reported the anguished plea from a mother whose two sons were trapped alive for two days under the rubble in Antakya, begging for a crane to rescue her children. “Many in Turkey say more people could have survived the 7.8 magnitude earthquake that struck the south of the country and neighboring Syria if the emergency response had been faster and better organized.” In the absence of an organized rescue effort, people were forced to dig through the rubble with their bare hands to save their family members.

    Turkish soldiers either did not show up to help in the rescue or were too slow to arrive, awaiting orders from Erdogan’s civilian officials. Interestingly, Erdogan had “risen to prominence more than two decades ago partly due to his critique of the response to a major 1999 earthquake,” Reuters reported. Instead, “he hollowed out state institutions, placed loyalists in key positions, wiped out most civil society organizations, and enriched his cronies to create a small circle of loyalists around him,” according to Foreignpolicy.com. Kemal Kilicdaroglu, leader of the main opposition party, said that even more damaging than the magnitude of last week’s quake was the “lack of coordination, lack of planning and incompetence.”

    Making the disaster worse, “in 2019, Pres. Erdogan of Turkey praised legislation that his political party had pushed through allowing property owners to have construction violations forgiven without bringing their buildings up to code,” according to The New York Times. Up to 75,000 buildings were given such amnesties in the earthquake zone alone. Ironically, just a few days before the earthquake, the government was about to issue another amnesty for construction violators. Now the Turkish government is arresting building contractors with ties to collapsed buildings. But the true culprits are the government officials who approved these shoddy buildings. Many of the owners of these buildings have close ties to Pres. Erdogan or his ruling political party.

    Rather than taking urgent measures to rescue the trapped citizens, Erdogan lashed back at his critics. One such critic, “a French journalist with long experience in Turkey, Guillaume Perrier, was detained at the Istanbul airport and deported back to France, with a five-year ban on his reentry into the country,” the Middle East Institute reported. Furthermore, the government temporarily closed down the social media in the midst of the earthquake to block criticism of the Turkish government’s incompetence.

    The Jerusalem Post published an article on Feb. 20, titled: “After the earthquake, Turkey’s Erdogan hunts for scapegoats.” The article stated that: “Erdogan’s house of cards has collapsed with the earthquake. There is already a rush to find scapegoats and as well as the arrests of looters…. Faced with the coming elections, what Erdogan will find equally hard to explain is a video circulating on social media, where he boasted he had approved a construction amnesty for buildings in the earthquake epicenter of Kahramanmarash, in 2019. This meant they were absolved from adhering to building and earthquake regulations. In the 10 earthquake provinces, almost 295,000 buildings were included.”

    One of the unexpected side effects of the disastrous earthquake is that Turkey will be preoccupied for several years with the reconstruction of over hundred thousand collapsed buildings. Turkey’s attention will be sidetracked from attacking Syria, Iraq, Cyprus, Greece, Armenia and Libya. These countries will breathe a sigh of relief for a while!

  • Aid from Armenia to Turkey Generates Heated Debate Among Armenians

    Aid from Armenia to Turkey Generates Heated Debate Among Armenians

    The Armenian government’s decision to send massive humanitarian aid and dozens of rescuers to Turkey following the powerful earthquake generated much controversy among Armenians.

    The Turkish government is not a friend of Armenia or Armenians. Turkey is a mortal enemy having committed the Armenian Genocide in 1915 and continuing its denials until today. More recently, the Turkish military and imported Islamic terrorists supported Azerbaijan during the 2020 Artsakh War, causing the deaths of thousands of Armenian soldiers. Last week, Pres. Recep Tayyip Erdogan acknowledged that Azerbaijan was reciprocating for Turkey’s support during the 2020 war by sending several hundred rescuers to the earthquake zone. Erdogan then added his often repeated mantra, “Azerbaijan and Turkey are one nation, two states.” Furthermore, a week ago, while Armenia was providing humanitarian aid to Turkey, the Turkish government, in the midst of the disastrous earthquake, found the time to condemn the Mexican Senate for recognizing the Armenian Genocide.

    Armenia’s sending 27 rescuers and 100 tons of food, medicines and other relief supplies to Turkey was controversial because the aid was provided not only to an unrepentant enemy and on the heels of the Armenian losses inflicted by Turkey during the 2020 War, but during the current humanitarian crisis in Artsakh due to Azeri blockade of the Lachin Corridor, which is supported by Turkey. While 120,000 Armenians in Artsakh are slowly starving to death being deprived of food and medicines for over 60 days, Armenia’s Prime Minister, President and Speaker of the Parliament, ignoring Armenian sensitivities, announced sending aid to Turkey. They naively insisted that their humanitarian action will help bring peace between Armenia and Turkey.

    Naturally, when a major disaster happens anywhere in the world, most countries rush to the rescue of those afflicted. Armenia could not remain indifferent. However, Armenian leaders could have softened the public’s backlash if they had issued a more delicately-worded announcement regarding the aid to Turkey while acknowledging that they are mindful of the plight of Artsakh Armenians due to the blockade of the Lachin Corridor.

    It is important that Armenians distinguish between the Turkish government and Turkish people. Armenia and Armenians have a justified demand from the Turkish government for the Armenian losses suffered during the Genocide, but they should not antagonize individual Turks who played no part in the Genocide, since they were not even born at that time. However, if a Turk denies the Genocide and insults the memory of the Armenian martyrs, he or she should be condemned just as the denialist Turkish government.

    One of the consequences of the disastrous earthquake in Turkey is the collapse of Erdogan’s already low political rating. There are claims by the Turkish opposition that Erdogan has unfairly dispatched most of the Turkish rescuers to the earthquake regions inhabited by his supporters who had voted for him in the past. He has been subjected to harsh criticisms due to the Turkish government’s slow actions to rescue the large number of victims of the earthquake. Tens of thousands of Turkish citizens died due to the collapse of poorly constructed hundreds of high-rise apartment buildings, as a result of Erdogan government’s corrupt practices. Many buildings that were properly constructed did not collapse.

    The Presidential election in Turkey is scheduled for May 14, 2023, three months from now. Knowing that his chances of winning re-election fairly is low, Pres. Erdogan will probably delay the election, giving him time to come up with various schemes to boost his rating. Getting re-elected is a must for Erdogan because if he loses the election, he will not just lose the presidency. He risks ending up in jail for the rest of his life because of his and his family’s massive corruption.

    Therefore, Erdogan will do everything possible to remain in power. Even though he has no legal right to postpone the election, he will order the judiciary to rule that given the emergency situation in the country, delaying the election is legal and justified.

    Erdogan is already making lavish promises to his potential voters. He has promised to millions of homeless Turkish survivors of the earthquake that the government will give them free apartments in one year. Erdogan is forgetting that he has no right to make such a promise because a year from now he may not be the President of Turkey.

    Erdogan will also provide large amounts of money to the public to win over their votes. To rebuild the devastated areas of Turkey, foreign countries and international financial institutions will donate billions of dollars which Erdogan will distribute lavishly to the voters to get re-elected.

  • ITU Volunteering Club In-kind Aid Support

    ITU Volunteering Club In-kind Aid Support

    Dear ITU members,

    As ITU Volunteering Club, our in-kind and cash aid efforts for the earthquake victims continue in cooperation with public institutions and organizations.

    You can donate to the account number below in order to overcome the disaster in our country together, to support and contribute to our relief efforts. Your donations will be converted into in-kind aid (dried food, winter clothes and water, etc.) and delivered to the earthquake victim families. 

    İTÜ Strateji Geliştirme Daire Başkanlığı

    IBAN: TR06 0001 5001 5800 7296 1554 37

    Explanation: İTÜ Gönüllülük Kulübü Şartlı Bağış

    ITU RECTORATE

  • Facts not reported by the media re Turkiye earthquake

    Facts not reported by the media re Turkiye earthquake

    To the attention of all reporting journalists:

    AKP tries to politicise the aid efforts rather than ensuring that it is delivered speedily!
    Accounts given below are by volunteers.

    These are scandalous incidents from yesterday:

    1: Adana . The local council got together food aid. The local AKP governor attempted to stop the food shipments by insisting that AKP logos were put on the boxes.
    This was refused and the crowd sent the “AKP “ officials packing.

    Also AKP officials insisted that the food aid (tents serving soup for 5000 people) provided by the Municipal Authority can not be distributed unless the tents have signs of Adana Belediye WERE REMOVED and replaced by State logos!

    2: Bodrum: identical as Adana:
    The Mayor got together huge amounts of aid for the earthquake zone. AKP officials tried to stop it from being delivered.

    The foreign media seemingly are unaware of these facts as the media is usually controlled by the President. It is a well known fact that the Government does not like non AKP controlled Municipal administrations and tries to curtail their activities for fear of losing votes!

    This inhumane and politically designed interference into the aid effort by volunteers with the organisation of local administration needs to be urgently reported by all international media.

    Betula Nelson
    London