Earthquake budget slashed in disaster-prone Istanbul as scientists sound alarm bells

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In an interview on TVNET last week, well-known geologist Professor Dr. Nasi Gurur said that the expected earthquake in the Sea of ​​Marmara will affect many cities, including Istanbul, and once again warned the authorities to take urgent measures as soon as possible. .

Rescue services personnel search the wreckage of a collapsed building for survivors in Izmir, Turkey, early Saturday, Oct. 31, 2020. (AP Photo/Emrah Gurel)

His remarks amounted to an indictment not only of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AKP government, which has been in power since 2002, but also of the bourgeois opposition parties that govern the various municipalities of the capital.

Asked about his opinion on the decision of the CHP that runs the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (İBB) to cut its earthquake-related expenditures by two-thirds in its 2023 public budget, Gur condemned the decision. In a city where a major earthquake is expected to hit millions of people, the 2023 budget allocated 1.8 billion lira (less than 100,000 USD) for earthquake preparedness. This is only 1.59 percent of the total municipal budget.

Stressing that it is not right to act slowly in this matter, let alone cut the budget, amid the threat of mass death, Güror stated that the expected earthquake should be the number one issue for all officials at the national and local levels.

Gurur, one of Turkey’s most respected seismologists, vehemently disputed a 2021 report by İBB that estimated that only 14,000 deaths would occur in a possible major earthquake in Istanbul, a city of about 16 million.

“It’s not true,” he said bluntly, describing the dangers facing millions of workers in Istanbul. “Simple arithmetic: there are 1.6 million buildings. Let’s reduce all deaths to 1% in Istanbul. This means 16,000 buildings. Suppose each building has four floors. It means 64,000 floors. If we think there are two apartments on each floor, that means 128,000 apartments.” .Put four people in each apartment.Does it exceed 400,000 [deaths]? “

Last year, Assistant Professor Dr. Doğan Calafat said that “the probability of a magnitude 7 earthquake occurring in Marmara by 2030 is 64 percent.” While this possibility continues to increase every year, such an earthquake is expected to have devastating effects in cities such as Bursa, Balikesir, Tekirdag, Kocaeli and Yalova, and especially in Istanbul.

Such large earthquakes are known to have previously occurred in the region at intervals of about 250 years. According to historical records, the last violent earthquake occurred in the Sea of ​​Marmara just over 250 years ago, in 1766, and destroyed various settlements.

After Ekrem Imamoglu of the CHP won the Istanbul elections in 2019, the Istanbul Planning Agency organized the “Istanbul Earthquake Workshop” on December 2-3, 2019. The workshop report, titled “Istanbul Main Agenda: Earthquake,” revealed that Risks Istanbul is facing a possible earthquake. According to the Environmental Protection Agency report, the number of buildings that will suffer light, medium and high damage in a 7.5-magnitude earthquake is estimated at 500,000 buildings, while 48,000 of these buildings are expected to be severely damaged.

Mehmet Çakılıçoğlu, Secretary General of the Istanbul Municipality at the time, said in the closing remarks at the workshop: “If we talk about how to transform buildings as much as we were talking about fault lines 20 years ago, we will be very tense. Different points today [in preparation for an earthquake]. “

The report declared: “After years of wasting time to ensure the safety of citizens’ lives and property in the face of earthquakes, what must be done now is for all stakeholders to work in coordination under the leadership of reason and science to make Istanbul the most resilient, livable and sustainable city.”

The report also warned: “Otherwise, it will be too late to take risk mitigation measures in the face of a devastating earthquake and we will have to bear irreparable losses. Without action, the Istanbul earthquake could become a disaster for Turkey.”

In one of the opening speeches of the workshop, Imamoglu said: “The most important issue that should be a priority in Istanbul is the earthquake and the safety of lives and property that will be affected by the earthquake. Our goal is to raise awareness and prepare the city for all disasters, especially earthquakes, in Istanbul and all over Turkey.”

The Istanbul municipality’s cutting of earthquake preparedness funds, ignoring the results of its own scientific studies, turns a blind eye to the mass deaths that would occur in a major earthquake – just as the Erdoğan government and AKP municipal administrations have done for years.

In 2019, Imamoglu was a candidate for the “nation alliance” of the CHP and its far-right ally, the Good Party, which is supported by the Kurdish nationalist Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) and the pseudo-left. He defeated the candidate of the Justice and Development Party, which has ruled Istanbul for decades.

In his campaign, Imamoglu criticized the AKP-run municipal administration for not making preparations for the earthquake in Istanbul. His campaign promises included building 100,000 homes in five years and preparing the city for earthquakes. The Imamoglu administration, now in its fourth year, has proven indifferent to urban transformation and earthquake preparedness. It expresses the absolute indifference of the ruling class to the life and health of the working masses.

For years, Istanbul’s “urban transformation”, introduced as an earthquake preparedness measure, was a way to move working-class residents out of the city center and build luxury housing for the wealthy. The primary objective of this policy is not to protect the population from earthquakes but to enhance the profits of construction companies and enrich the wealthiest strata of society.

While the effects of this shift can be seen in wealthier downtown neighborhoods, the older building stock, which makes up a large portion of workers’ neighborhoods largely ignored by builders, is waiting to collapse on millions of people in an earthquake. .

It is even more politically criminal that tens of thousands of dwellings remain empty in Istanbul, and the technology and labor are there to quickly build hundreds of thousands of safe homes. However, such solutions are not being implemented by the ruling class and its political representatives, as they contradict the profit interests of the construction companies and the political goals of the capitalist state.

While the Erdoğan government is undoubtedly mainly responsible for this massive destruction and death that threatens millions of workers, the bourgeois opposition parties and the pseudo-left currents that support them are also complicit in these disasters that could have been avoided by not taking any measures against the earthquake.

The antagonism between a capitalist system based on profit, private property, and the basic needs of people has been seen recently in the devastating “profits before lives” response to the COVID-19 pandemic by capitalist governments around the world.

A massive public works plan is necessary to rebuild cities around the world threatened by natural disasters based on scientific planning and the highest level of security to provide everyone with the basic right to safe housing. The implementation of this solution requires a conscious struggle for workers’ power – in a struggle for international socialism, based on planning world economic life around social needs, not private profit.

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