Why Turkey's Earthquake Response Was Such a Disaster

This year saw one of the most catastrophic earthquakes in Turkish history, with the death toll in the country topping 43,000. The botched emergency response, finger-pointing, and gross incompetence that have followed the initial disaster vividly demonstrate the toll that two decades of the ruling AKP party’s authoritarian governance have inflicted on the country.

It is unconscionable that so many citizens have been left to fend for themselves after a disaster of this scale. Reports indicated that the government’s initial response to the earthquake was to deploy only a few, badly coordinated professional rescue teams with limited equipment.

Given the region’s centuries-long record of seismic activity, one can only conclude that the government failed to deliver on its public-safety responsibilities. Compounding the tragedy, additional lives were lost due to the endemic corruption, cronyism, and favoritism that plague certain industrial sectors, with the result that a great many buildings were allowed to skirt established earthquake safety standards.

If this earthquake was a wake-up call to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, he hit the snooze button.

The Rot of Corruption

In the aftermath, social media was rife with stories and images of families being denied emergency services. In some cases, they even appeared to be actively prevented from digging out surviving family members from the rubble. News reports that 7 million housing units have been granted “construction amnesties,” despite many being the very same buildings that collapsed in the earthquake, only intensify public anger toward the government’s seeming torpor and indifference. Reports that the Turkish Red Crescent was selling its tents to another disaster-related NGO prompted outrage. Erdoğan repeatedly scolds those who complain, saying “what happens, happens.”

Meanwhile, companies within the construction industry who won contracts through political nepotism and favoritism face no consequences.

Turkey is home to some of the world’s most prominent construction companies, with 44 of them ranked among the top 250 global contractors. With approximately 130,000 businesses engaged in the building industry, Turkish construction companies have earned billions of dollars on thousands of projects around the world.

In exchange for their political support, the current Turkish government has awarded through its patronage system massive construction projects to a number of these companies. Many of them are ill-equipped to fulfill their contracts, and these companies subsequently use their political connections to maximize quarterly profits by cutting corners. They use less expensive, substandard materials, while persuading inspectors to look the other way. Despite this blatant corruption, Turkey’s construction sector has yet to face any substantive scrutiny, due to the powerful government patronage it enjoys.

The rot of poor governance cascades up and down the earthquake response. Organizations that proved effective in the past, such as the Search and Rescue Association disaster relief NGO, known by its acronym AKUT, had new leadership imposed on them by the government. AKUT has been forced to comply with new regulations and incompetent oversight, while the government-created Disaster and Management Authority, or AFAD, has been staffed with inexperienced and overworked AKP-approved bureaucrats. These staffers lack the authority to make any decisions, rendering them ineffective in coordinating a successful response when natural disasters strike.

It Was Not Always So Bad

With a critical election approaching on May 14, Erdoğan’s opponents are paying close attention. Amid numerous tours of the affected areas, they are pointing out the shortcomings — specifically the lack of coordination by the AKP, coordination that fared much better under previous governments during disasters such as the last great earthquake, in 1999.

According to Meral Akşener, the head of the Good Party (IYI), the minister appointed for earthquake response would convene a meeting every morning with leaders of all political parties, including governors, mayors, and local elected officials, as well as members of non-governmental and civil society organizations.

The meetings allowed sharing of information and data to ensure that all people impacted by an earthquake were being assisted and that all efforts to rebuild and renew the affected areas would be closely coordinated and would occur as safely, efficiently, and transparently as possible.

Such multiparty coordination is but a faint memory under the Erdoğan regime.

In seeking to shirk responsibility, the government has found a few sacrificial lambs among developers and construction companies. But not a single government official has accepted responsibility, and no one has resigned. There have been no moves to open internal investigations, as the government considers itself blameless.

Centralized power makes for disaster in responding quickly to a crisis. Local authorities used to have greater autonomy to act quickly, with rapid decisions that would be most beneficial to their constituents. Now they are immobilized by Erdoğan’s loyalist but frequently incompetent bureaucracy, needing to wait upon instructions and approvals from above as precious response time is lost.

If there is any lesson to draw from this fiasco, it is that Turkey desperately needs to return to a more flexible parliamentary system, which encourages cooperation, minimizes polarization, and focuses on stronger representation of constituents. This is the only option if Turkey wants to develop into a stable country, a regional power, and a reliable global partner with a positive future, while better serving its constituents’ most pressing needs.

Let’s hope that May 14th makes such a future possible.

Dr. John C. K. Daly is a Nonresident Senior Fellow of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute; current work includes monographs on the development of Eurasia’s railways and the dissolution of the Soviet Navy. The views expressed are the author's own.