On August 17, 1999,
Turkey suffered an earthquake registering 7.6 on the Richter scale that killed
some 176,000 people. The then leader of
the opposition in Turkey’s parliament, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was scathing in
his condemnation of a government that had failed to prepare the country against
the possibility of a natural disaster that was known to occur from time to time.
Shortly afterwards Turkey’s
parliament approved a special tax, known as the earthquake tax, whose proceeds
would be earmarked to strengthen the nation’s infrastructure, reinforce
buildings and prepare cities to cope better with earthquakes. Temporary at the time, it was made permanent
when Erdogan and his AKP party swept to power in 2002.
Over the past 23 years
this special tax has raised about $4.7 billion. Unfortunately, when the 7.8 magnitude quake
struck south-eastern Turkey on February 6, there was little evidence that any earthquake
preparation or strengthened building construction had taken place. Residential
tower blocks collapsed like packs of cards, hundreds of ordinary homes and low
level buildings were razed to the ground.
As rescuers toiled to pull bodies from the urban devastation, and
survivors shivered in the freezing temperatures, questions were being asked
about what had happened to the huge sums raised by the earthquake tax.
These questions came as no
surprise to Erdogan’s government. They had
already been raised in the aftermath of the magnitude 7.0 earthquake in Izmir on
November 13, 2020. The government was
pressed then to account for the billions of dollars raised by the earthquake tax.
The opposition party, the CHP, said that
had the revenue been used properly, millions of buildings around the country
could have been strengthened to help them survive.
Alpay Antmen, a lawyer
and CHP politician, was reported as saying: “This money was meant to be used
for urban transformation and for making housing areas in the earthquake zones
much more resilient. However, about 70 billion lira of these taxes was…
transferred to the builders close to the government.”
This allegation was
clarified in a recent media report. In
2018 the Erdogan-led government launched a special amnesty called “zoning
peace”. On payment of a fee anyone could
legalize whatever property they may have built or renovated in violation of
building regulations. Thanks to this
loophole, about 13 million non-compliant buildings across Turkey became legal,
according to industry estimates.
Professor Pelin Pinar
Giritlioghlu, head of the Istanbul branch of the Chamber of Turkish Engineers
and Architects, is reported to have said: “Many new buildings have become earthquake-fraught
after unauthorized renovations. The
state has pardoned those buildings in exchange for money…With the earthquake,
we have come up with the tragic outcome of this set-up.”
The political
implications of this issue for Erdogan and his AKP party could be critical.
With parliamentary and presidential elections scheduled for May 14, the failure
to account for how the vast earthquake tax resources have been expended has given
rise to public anger. There are suspicions they may have been misappropriated,
or at best used to little effect.
Turkey’s building boom had been marked by slipshod construction and by
the administration turning a blind eye to firms evading the quake-proofing
regulations. Erdogan and his allies are
well aware that the AKP rose to power in 2002 on the back of the then
government’s failures following the 1999 quake.
While calling for
national unity and a week of mourning for the victims of the disaster, Erdoğan clearly
has the elections in mind. On February 6
he phoned AKP municipalities offering help, but made no such offer to the
leadership in opposition-controlled areas. On February 7, he
appeared on TV to reject criticism of the government’s response to the quakes
and announce a 3-month state of emergency across Turkey's 10
southern provinces. It would be lifted just a week before the scheduled
elections. Later the same day, the Istanbul State Prosecutor
initiated criminal investigations into journalists who had reported the
criticism.
The crisis facing Turkey
is truly monumental, but Erdogan must surely turn his attention away from
silencing his critics, and focus on relieving the plight of his fellow
citizens, regardless of their political affiliations.
Much the same obligation
rests on the shoulders of Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, who had
been insisting that his regime must be solely responsible for delivering
aid in Syria. The government had a stranglehold on international aid supplies,
most of which flowed through Damascus, with very little reaching rebel-held
areas in the northwest. The same was true of aid workers. Assad
allowed them to assist people in regime-controlled areas, but very rarely
let them enter the northwest.
This may have changed on
February 10, when state controlled media announced that the government would
permit humanitarian aid to enter rebel-held areas. Whether this change of
stance will result in relieving the suffering there remains to be seen.
The easiest way to get aid directly into the non-regime region would
be from Turkey across the border, but there is only one land crossing from
Turkey into Syria, Bab al-Hawa, and it was damaged by the earthquakes.
The US has already ruled
out giving aid directly to Bashar’s regime. Secretary of State spokesman Ned Price has said:
“it would be ironic, if not even counterproductive, for us to reach out to a
government that has brutalized its people over the course of a dozen years now,
gassing them, slaughtering them, being responsible for much of the suffering
that they have endured”.
Experts say that a vast
amount of aid is necessary. Charles Lister, a senior fellow at the Middle East
Institute in Washington, said: “For northwestern Syria, this earthquake
represents a crisis within a crisis. After 12 years of brutal shelling by the
Syrian regime, at least 65 per cent of the area’s basic infrastructure was
already destroyed or heavily damaged… the scale of the needed response is huge.”
Basic humanity demands
that ways be found of relieving the immense suffering imposed by nature on the
peoples of Turkey and Syria, even if that suffering has been intensified many
times over by the failures of their politicians.
Published in the Jerusalem Post, and in the Jerusalem Post on-line under the title: "Corruption enabled the earthquakes' damage", 14 February 2023:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-731473
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