Named the main danger of an earthquake in Turkey for the political fate of Erdogan

As the mournful list of victims in Turkey and Syria swells with thousands of names, and the dust of the disaster still settles, regional analysts are assessing the long-term effect the quake could have on Turkey, a country of 85 million already struggling economically – and whose military, economic and political forces exert a serious influence far beyond its borders.

Even before any earthquakes, observers called this year a critical, turning point for Turkey, approaching the presidential elections scheduled for May 14. The outcome of this election – whether current President Recep Tayyip Erdogan remains in power or not – has huge implications for Turkey’s population, economy, currency and democracy, CNBC notes.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who faces one of the toughest election races in his two decades in power, has declared a 90-day state of emergency that allows him to quickly implement security and financial measures in disaster-hit areas.

The underground cataclysm, which led to huge casualties in Turkey and neighboring Syria, immediately ceased to be a phenomenon of purely natural origin, turning into a factor in big politics, especially since elections are just around the corner.

The head of the main opposition Republican People’s Party, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, immediately turned his anger on the president, saying that the country was ill-prepared for the disaster, and blamed Erdogan personally for this: “If anyone is primarily responsible for this, it is Erdogan . For 20 years, this government has not prepared the country for an earthquake.”

The opposition leader rattled the Turkish government, criticizing it for corruption and squandering taxpayer money intended to prepare for such catastrophes. Significantly, Erdogan called several of his political rivals after the earthquake, telling them that the country must overcome political differences in order to overcome the consequences of the disaster. But the President of Turkey did not call Kemal Kılıçdaroglu…

In any case, Erdogan is well aware that his political fate depends on a quick and decisive response to the earthquake. After all, writes Politico on this occasion, Turkey’s recent history shows that indecision is politically dangerous. When a massive earthquake hit the Izmit region near Istanbul in 1999, then-Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit, paralyzed by the magnitude of the disaster, was widely condemned for failing to mobilize quickly enough to respond to the disaster, which killed more than 17,000 people. . According to Politico, Erdogan appears determined to avoid the same mistakes, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have serious potential pitfalls.

Hours after the first aftershocks, he struggled to make it clear that he was now taking responsibility for what was happening. Speaking at the country’s coordination center in Ankara at a hastily organized press conference, he said the country was in the worst natural disaster since 1939, when strong tremors in the eastern province of Erzincan leveled or seriously damaged more than 100,000 buildings and killed about 33 thousand people.

But Erdogan may not have had the 1939 earthquake on his mind, but the more recent 1999 Izmit earthquake, suggests Gönül Tol, director of the Turkish program at the Middle East Institute, a Washington-based think tank. The expert recalls that in 1999 the press accused the government of a poor response to emergencies. Likewise, she said, although the earthquakes could not have been prevented this time, the suffering was exacerbated by inadequate responses in the first hours after the disaster struck.

The earthquake in Izmit, whose epicenter was not far from the outskirts of Istanbul, shook the country’s institutions to the core and changed Turkey’s policy in a way that subsequently contributed to the rise of Erdogan to power, writes Politico. In the 2002 parliamentary elections, the parties that dominated Turkish politics in the 1990s failed to pass the 10 percent vote threshold needed to win parliamentary seats, and Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party won a landslide victory.

Bülent Ecevit, who led the Turkish government in 1999,” according to historian and former New York Times journalist Steven Kinzer, was stunned by the scale of destruction after the Izmit earthquake, falling “into a prolonged state of shock. “Instead of immediately jumping into a helicopter to survey the disaster area and then ordering his aides to act, he spent days telling everyone who was willing to listen that everything was under control and there was nothing to worry about,” writes Kinzer. “Army commanders, who could be expected to send thousands of soldiers to the affected region, were also sitting on their hands. It quickly became clear that although Turkey sits on some of the world’s most dangerous geological faults and is shaken by earthquakes every few years, its government had no plan to deal with them, no disaster relief agency, no network of civil defense, not even the official appointed to lead at such times.”

Now Erdogan appears to be learning from the authorities’ response to the 1999 earthquake. How he will respond to the 2023 natural disaster — and potential calls for accountability for why so many buildings in seismically troubled Turkey were not designed well enough to withstand tremors like those of February 6 — will now play a major role in his political agenda. the future.

“If the response to the disaster is strong, the ruling administration is likely to be rewarded in the election,” Tim Ash, emerging markets strategist at BlueBay Asset Management, quoted Bloomberg as saying. “If it’s bad, then vice versa.” Although this judgment is in the spirit of “Captain Obviousness”, you cannot say more precisely.

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“Whenever there is a disaster in the country, he disappears,” Gönül Tol says of the Turkish president. “Usually he lets his ministers and people from his entourage solve the problem. So if something goes wrong, he can blame it on them.” However, this time Erdogan publicly intervened faster than usual and asked for international help.

“Given the scale of the disaster, the response was quick and quite effective,” said Emre Peker, director of Europe at the Eurasia Group think tank. “If this level of intensity of response can be maintained, then Erdogan will win ahead of the elections.”

The earthquake occurred on February 6, Monday, and already on Wednesday, Erdogan personally visited some of the regions affected by the earthquake. At the same time, as Bloomberg did not fail to notice, the president visited those areas where the population inclined to vote for his party lives, which is important for his success in the elections.

Speaking during a visit to a displaced people’s tent camp in Kahramanmaras, one of the hardest-hit cities, Erdogan promised to rebuild areas near the epicenter within a year.

Erdogan called the incident “the biggest disaster not only in the history of the republic, but also in the world” and mobilized his government to carry out rescue operations. The Turkish president used Wednesday’s visit to devastated Kahramanmaras to criticize those he accused of using the disaster to advance their own political agendas.

“I don’t want you to give provocateurs an opportunity,” Erdogan said. “The media should not give them that opportunity… Now is the time for unity, for solidarity.”

But whether he can avoid political consequences remains to be seen.

“When just one building collapses in a known earthquake zone, it is a tragedy,” Politico quoted expert Borza Daragahi as saying. “If dozens of houses in several major cities collapse, it signals a preventable tragedy. Turkey has vowed to make changes to its building practices after a tragic 1999 earthquake that killed 17,000 people. She introduced new building regulations and introduced compulsory earthquake insurance for all buildings. Architects and urban planners have been warning for years that the rules are not strictly enforced.”

Many quake-hit areas have experienced a construction boom over the past two decades, encouraged by Erdogan, with large-scale construction projects involving companies with strong ties to Erdogan and the ruling Justice and Development Party. If it turns out that new buildings and apartment buildings were disproportionately more vulnerable than older buildings, then detractors will blame Erdogan and his supporters.

In addition, the earthquake presented Erdogan with another political challenge: to quickly solve the problem of temporary housing for survivors and victims.

“If rescue efforts are mishandled and people become disillusioned, there will be a backlash,” analyst Mike Harris, founder of Cribstone Strategic Macro, told CNBC the day after the disaster. – And the other question, of course, is the buildings and which ones fell apart. To the extent that they were built according to the new codes and the authorities did not impose any rules, this could be a serious retaliatory blow for Erdogan.”

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Compounding the problem for the current Turkish leader, his popularity was waning before disaster struck as the country faced a major cost-of-living crisis that economists say was fueled by unconventional economic policies pursued by his government and central bank.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan called for elections in May amid a national cost-of-living crisis, with local inflation topping 57% – up from over 80% between August and November. Several analysts say the move is indicative of Erdogan’s eagerness to secure another term in office before his controversial economic policies backfire.

In a CNBC commentary, Mike Harris noted that Erdogan has created “this strange situation where inflation reaches 80%, but he needs to keep the currency stable until the elections.”

In a very unorthodox policy, the Turkish president “found a very creative way, in fact, a very costly way to de-dollarize the economy,” the expert said, citing examples such as allowing Turks to keep their bank deposits at a 13% interest rate and then promising to cover their losses. if the currency falls further.

In fact, Harris predicts that the Turkish lira should collapse if Erdogan wins “because there is no certainty and he has created this artificial scenario that cannot be sustained for a long period of time.”

Turkey’s economic downturn was fueled by a combination of high global energy prices, the COVID-19 pandemic and the conflict in Ukraine, as well as government economic policies that lowered interest rates despite soaring inflation, pushing the Turkish lira to a record low against the dollar. The Turkish lira has lost almost 30% of its value against the dollar over the past year, which has seriously undermined the purchasing power of the Turks and the popularity of the head of state, CNBC notes.

In addition, Erdogan’s earlier financial campaign promises – such as raising wages and lowering the retirement age – may now be unfulfilled, as more public funds will need to be channeled into rebuilding entire cities.

Now, the government’s ability to rescue people and provide assistance to an estimated 13.4 million people in the disaster area has become a major issue for Erdogan ahead of the elections. In other words, for his political future.