Abdullah Bozkurt
Nordic Monitor, Feb. 11, 2023
“Erdoğan, his family and his cronies in political and business establishments pocketed huge sums at the expense of the safety of citizens.”
The large-scale destruction of property and huge number of casualties in Turkey’s massive earthquakes earlier this week have exposed decades of mismanagement, nepotism and waste of funds and resources in the governance of Turkey under the corrupt regime of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
The two powerful quakes, 7.7 and 7.6 magnitudes according to Turkish authorities, with epicenters in the Pazarcık and Elbistan districts of the southeastern province of Kahramanmaraş, struck on Monday an area of some 110,000 square kilometers spanning 10 provinces with 13.5 million residents. According to the official tally, 20,318 people were killed and 91,511 were injured. The shortcomings in quake preparedness and major failures in responding to disasters within the critical 48-hour timeframe caused outrage and fury towards the government.
Erdoğan first came to power in 2002, propelled by two devastating earthquakes that killed about 18,000 people and injured some 50,000 in northwestern Turkey in 1999, with a promise to address corruption in the government and bolster earthquake preparedness in the country, much of which lies atop the active North Anatolian Fault.
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