Everyone in Turkey is familiar with the saying: “Earthquakes don’t kill, buildings do.” Çınar Oskay analyzes in San Francisco Cronicle on February 26, 2023.
In 1999, my country was hit by a 7.6 magnitude earthquake near the northwestern city of Izmit. The destruction was catastrophic. Over 18,000 people lost their lives according to the official count, although some put the figure closer to 50,000. At the time, I was living about 65 miles away in Istanbul, but I still remember waking up and running out of our trembling building with my mother. People ate and slept on their sofas in the streets for days, scared of the aftershocks. It was the biggest trauma in our collective memory.
When I moved to the Bay Area last summer, I knew I was trading one earthquake zone for another. But I also knew, in the event of a massive tectonic shift underneath my feet, I would have a much better chance at survival in my new home. The highest death toll from a California earthquake in over a century was the 7.8 magnitude San Francisco earthquake of 1906. It claimed around 3,000 lives. The 6.9 Loma Prieta earthquake killed 63 in 1989.
Ever since the earthquake in Izmit, Turkey has been an earthquake-obsessed nation. On Turkish television, there are endless debates about the inadequacy of precautions and warnings from earth scientists about the Big One — a possible earthquake in Istanbul, a city with a population of nearly 16 million, or 19 San Franciscos. The conversations are so constant in our public consciousness that some of our earthquake experts have become national celebrities — much like Anthony Fauci has in the U.S. because of the pandemic.
But none of it mattered this month. On Feb. 6, Turkey’s southern and central regions were hit by a 7.8 magnitude earthquake followed nine hours later by a 7.6 magnitude one. The official death toll is nearly 44,000 people with several thousand more dead in neighboring Syria. With bodies still to be recovered and 1.5 million Turks now homeless in the middle of winter, that number is expected to rise.
Living in Palo Alto, all I could do in the past few weeks was watch the news in pain and anger. Turkish television showed expanses of rubble with people tucked in between seeking what little shelter they could find. And yet, every so often, in the midst of the destruction, there would be a building still standing. In one instance, a camera panned from an obliterated building to a home and kitchen store on the ground floor of a still standing building across the street; even the porcelain plates on display remained perfectly intact.
The imagery was as damning as it was clear: The carnage before us today wasn’t inevitable and the responsibility for it falls squarely on the shoulders of Turkish President Recep Erdogan and the undemocratic, kleptocratic regime he created.
The lesson for my new neighbors in the United States: corruption and the erosion of democracy aren’t simply injustices, they’re deadly.
Since the Izmit earthquake, Turks have been paying a Special Communication Tax, known as the earthquake tax. Framed as funding for disaster prevention and relief, this tax has generated an estimated $38 billion dollars since its creation over 20 years ago. The Justice and Development Party, or AKP, the ruling political party co-founded by Erdogan, has led the national government since 2002, with Erdogan first elected prime minister in 2003.
But in 2011, after a series of earthquakes hit the eastern part of the country, then-Finance Minister Mehmet Şimşek said that the revenue had been spent on highways, railways and other infrastructure. People were angry but there was no political fallout. A few months earlier, AKP had won its third consecutive election and the government was increasingly becoming authoritarian. Accountability became less of a concern and corruption in the construction industry, the backbone of AKP funding and support, became rampant.
The death and suffering we are seeing today are the results.
For years, many contractors used cheap building materials and got around abiding by building safety regulations. In 2019, Erdogan boasted about allowing contractors to bypass building safety codes in the city of Kahramanmaras, near the epicenter of the recent earthquake, in order to build housing cheaper and faster.
But corruption isn’t the only byproduct of authoritarianism. A lack of meritocracy within the government goes hand-in-hand. During the Izmit earthquake in 1999, the government failed in many ways, but at least there were strong civilian rescue agencies — the Turkish Red Crescent and the Arama Kurtarma, or AKUT. These two civilian organizations worked with the Turkish military to lead the recovery effort. But after years of an authoritarian rule more concerned with consolidating its own power than being an effective government, even these civilian organizations have been eclipsed.
In 2009, Erdogan formed the Disaster and Emergency Management Authority, known as AFAD, a new agency to be the coordinating body for the Turkish military and non-governmental organizations. By this time, experienced bureaucrats and secular Turks were being replaced by ruling-party loyalists across the government. By 2018, Erdogan abolished the parliamentary system and through a referendum, became the sole authority over the country as its president. His regime also installed a theology professor with no experience in disaster response to lead AFAD. Nasuh Mahruki, the founder of AKUT, was pushed out because of his secularist views, and the Red Crescent, once a symbol of national unity, is now seen as a shady, polarizing institution.
Turkish media has reported that in the first days after this month’s earthquakes, many governors hesitated to launch rescue efforts before getting AFAD approval. The military, by far the country’s most organized force, is trained and equipped for such operations. But they were nowhere near the rubble for days. Instead, the government sent religious workers, employees of an over-financed Presidency of Religious Affairs. When people were still alive, buried underneath the rubble, these religious men chanted salâ, a public announcement of death, from the mosques. Thousands died listening to their own funeral prayer.
The government has touted its own fundraising efforts on behalf of the recent earthquake victims. But of the $6 billion raised during a seven-hour television drive, nearly three-fourths of the funds raised came from government agencies, including the Central Bank. It was a spectacle of giving people’s money to the people. As for Turks themselves, with little trust in the government, they’re donating to efforts led by former rock singer Haluk Levent and Youtube star Oğuzhan Uğur, both of whom were on the ground immediately after the earthquake.
In the three weeks since the earthquakes, not a single politician has resigned.
Turkey’s presidential elections are scheduled for May 14. Before the earthquake, polling showed Erdogan was already behind every potential rival. Now, his defeat seems even closer. There has been some talk from Erdogan loyalists about delaying the elections indefinitely but just as Americans rejected a similar attempt to postpone their election in 2020 from their kleptocratic former president, so too will the Turkish people.
The only thing left of Turkish democracy is our elections. This year is the 100th year of our republic. If we cannot rescue our democracy, we might spend the rest of our lives listening to the funeral prayers of our beautiful, beloved country.
Americans would be wise to pay attention to our example.
Çınar Oskay is a journalist and documentary filmmaker from Turkey. He is a 2023 John S. Knight Journalism fellow at Stanford University.
Çınar Oskay analyzes in San Francisco Cronicle on February 26, 2023.