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The three months since devastating earthquakes devastated cities across southern Turkey has seen progress toward President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s promise to “build from the ground up”.
However, the scale of the task ahead remains less daunting after the rubble has been cleared and new dwellings have been revealed.
The earthquake zone is being rebuilt as Turkey faces elections on May 14, and the impact of the disaster on voting behavior has been widely discussed. Polls show that the race could be the toughest of Erdogan’s 20 years in power.
The economic cost of the February 6 earthquakes is estimated at $103.6 billion, or about 10 percent of Turkey’s GDP. The cost, disclosed in a March report from the Presidency’s Office of Strategy and Budget, covers damage to buildings, infrastructure, industry, insurance and the resulting macroeconomic impact.
Then there is the human cost. The latest official estimate is that 50,783 people lost their lives in an area covering 110,000 square kilometres, roughly the size of Bulgaria.
About 3 million people initially fled the 11 disaster-stricken counties, leaving more than 300,000 buildings destroyed or unsafe. It is unclear how many have returned.
In the days immediately following the disaster, Erdoğan vowed to repair the devastation within a year — a commitment that seemed fanciful given the massive reconstruction effort and spending required.
On April 22, the president unveiled the first new homes – 10 village houses in Nordağı, near the epicenter of Kahramanmaras province.
“We have started the construction of more than 105,000 houses and completed the excavation work for about half of them,” said Mr. Erdogan.
He promised to rebuild 650,000 homes, including 319,000, within a year. The height of the new buildings will not exceed four floors and will be located on the ground, which will mitigate the effects of earthquakes in the future.
But the government’s timetable appears unrealistic and some say it has underestimated the scale of reconstruction.
Reconstruction and prevention
The earthquakes will have a “significant and long-term negative impact on the Turkish economy, particularly on growth, employment, inflation, fiscal and financial accounts, wealth and poverty,” said Burcu Aydin Ozodoğru, director of the Tepav Research Center in Ankara.
Tipav estimated the recovery cost would reach $150 billion over five years and slow Turkey’s economic growth by 1.2 percent this year.
The quakes have also focused attention on other vulnerable parts of the country, particularly Istanbul, Turkey’s megacity of 16 million. With some 90,000 buildings at risk of collapsing in the event of a major earthquake, the city needs to spend at least $19 billion to fortify its building stock, according to Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu.
In a report released this week, the Chamber of Architects of Turkey said that reconstruction and recovery efforts have failed to meet the need to protect public health, create safe living conditions and meet basic needs.
She added that reconstruction projects worth billions of pounds have been allocated without following the procurement laws.
“Ignoring public and legal supervision, the region’s planning and zoning process has begun restructuring, with an emphasis on turning public resources, cities, natural and cultural facilities into investment tools,” the report said.
Meanwhile, the international community rallied to provide financial support.
At an EU donors conference in March, $7.69 billion was pledged for reconstruction, including $1 billion for Syria. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the World Bank provided loans with a total value of $3.4 billion.
The question remains how Türkiye will make up for the shortfall. Erdogan’s unconventional economic policies and erosion of the rule of law have spooked foreign investors, and any foreign borrowing would attract high rates.
Hard-hit local banks are already struggling to cope with a series of measures imposed on them by the government in an effort to prop up the ailing economy.
The worsening economic situation, the burden of the cost of earthquakes and Turkey’s dependence on outside financing to rebuild homes, factories, roads and most other aspects of life have led to questions about the country’s standing in the world.
Erdogan has long championed Ankara’s view as a world leader, guiding its course in international affairs and offering an alternative to European and American leadership.
“There is nothing wrong with asking for help in a time of need,” said Namik Tan, a former Turkish ambassador to Washington who is running as an opposition parliamentary candidate in this month’s elections.
“But it was only a few months before the earthquakes that we were bragging about how Turkey provided most of the humanitarian aid in the world [based on per capita income]”.
Now we hear from our government that LDCs have been digging into their pockets for us. Now we see our bankruptcy on the verge of bankruptcy, skillfully concealed hitherto, rearing its ugly head.
The hardest hit provinces, with the exception of Hatay, are under the control of the ruling Justice and Development Party. How Erdogan’s supporters will react to the government’s post-earthquake policies at the polls will not become clear until election day.
“I think many AKP voters agree with the point that the government was ill-equipped and inadequate in its response, especially during the first 72 hours,” said Berk Esen, assistant professor of political science at Sabancı University in Istanbul.
“This does not mean that it will lead to a major electoral decline for the party in the region, but I think it was a heavy blow and it has already affected the AKP government economically.
“They were planning to distribute more resources in the run-up to the elections and the earthquake simply stifled those efforts and depleted their resources, which is why the system has become weaker than it would otherwise have been.”
Updated: May 08, 2023, 2:32 am
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