Many Turks are complaining that the government was late in sending humanitarian aid to the damaged zones. The Turkish President is now contradicting his own words. “As humans, it is not in our hands to prevent disasters yet, it is in our hands to take measures against their destructive impacts,” said Erdogan. In 2022, the Turkish President, while commemorating the anniversary of the 1999 earthquake that destroyed parts of the country, hailed his government’s “urban transformation projects” that would shield his people from future earthquakes. The head of the local chamber of architects was even surprised and observed that the buildings were not reinforced with steel. The recent earthquake impacted a poor and conservative population with mixed Sunni, Alevi and Kurdish backgrounds, which may further reduce support for AKP. Will the current earthquake have the same effect as that of 1999 and this time oust President Erdogan and his party? Soner Cagaptay, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and the author of A Sultan in Autumn: Erdogan Faces Turkey’s Uncontainable Forces, writes, “The natural disaster, coupled with an ensuing economic crisis, stoked deep dissatisfaction and spurred the toppling of the secular and often illiberal regimes that had prevailed since the country emerged from the wreck of the Ottoman Empire, in 1922.” Out of the rubble of the earthquake, Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Islamist AKP took advantage of the failed crisis response of the government and scored victories in the municipal and parliamentary elections. This article will analyze the impact of the earthquake on Turkey’s domestic politics amid the upcoming presidential and parliamentary elections as Turkey prepares to celebrate the centennial of its foundation as a republic in October 2023.Īn earthquake in 1999 killed nearly 19,000 people in Turkey and exposed the limitations of the social contract between Turkey’s citizens and their paternalistic state. The Turkish President is known for exploiting crises how he will be able to manage this current crisis and use it to his advantage is still questionable. Thus, any political shift will have an impact on the political landscape of the region. After the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh, its influence increased in the South Caucasus. Turkey is a central power in the Middle East. Despite speculation that Erdogan may postpone the elections, he declared that presidential and parliamentary elections will be held on the agreed-upon date, May 14th of this year. The fallout of the catastrophic earthquake came as President Erdogan faces his toughest re-election campaign yet. On February 6, 2023, two earthquakes with magnitudes 7.8 and 7.5 - the deadliest in Turkey’s history - hit the Syrian-Turkish border.
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