Turkey: a study in impotence

By Richard North - February 16, 2023

As the death toll from the 6 February earthquakes in Turkey alone reaches 40,000 and the rescue process has been largely abandoned, the international media focus is progressively moving from straightforward disaster reporting to more reflective pieces exploring why the casualty rate has been so high.

Not untypical of the pieces coming through is the offering by Constanze Letsch, former Turkey correspondent for the Guardian, now writing in the current edition of the paper.

Ten days after the event, the heading: “An act of God caused the earthquake in Turkey – murderous corruption caused so many deaths”, is robust writing by any measure, although the punch is slightly weakened by the sub-heading which misses the political jugular.

“Corner-cutting contractors sold buildings as safe that then collapsed. But just as culpable are officials who offered permits and lax controls”, it tells us, which hardly squares up to the original charge of “murderous corruption”.

Just short of a week ago, while people were still being extracted from the rubble alive, Foreign Policy magazine was much more pointed, with the headline reading: “How Corruption and Misrule Made Turkey’s Earthquake Deadlier”.

This was strong enough, but the sub-heading took no hostages at all, declaring: “Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (pictured) hollowed out state institutions, placed loyalists in key positions, and enriched his cronies – paving the way for this tragedy”.

But then the author, Gonul Tol, is not a career journalist. Founding director of the Middle East Institute’s Turkey programme, she is author of Erdogan’s War: A Strongman’s Struggle at Home and in Syria and widely regarded as an expert on Turkish politics.

Nor does her text pull any punches, as she writes: “Powerful earthquakes kill people, but they are more deadly in countries like Turkey, where building regulations aren’t enforced, unqualified loyalists fill key positions, independent state institutions do not exist, civil society organizations have been wiped out, and the interests of a corrupt few are prioritized above all else”.

Compare and contrast this with a piece in the Financial Times on 14 February from Elif Shafak, an award-winning Turkish novelist based in London. All he can manage under the heading: “Erdoğan, the earthquake and the failings in my homeland”, is the assertion that the natural disaster has been “compounded” by man-made greed and corruption.

“The government will now probably blame individual contractors”, he writes, “and many are directly responsible for the calamity, but the authorities cannot pass the buck so easily”.

But what really grabbed my attention, and brought me back to this issue earlier than I intended, was another piece written in February, but this one two years ago on 10 February 2021.

Published in the English language version of duvaR, styled as “Turkey’s own independent gazette”, it headlines: “‘The gang of five’: Nepotism, corruption and tender-rigging in Erdoğan’s Turkey”, with a sub-heading that is best described as coruscating.

“Nepotism and corruption have become widespread in Turkey under the ruling AKP”, it reads, “Even when irregularities are discovered, no legal action is taken. The government doesn’t want transparency. They don’t want people to know how their politics are financed”.

And this is by a journalist, who goes by the name of Çiğdem Toker, known for her work about graft, government contracts, and tenders.

“Graft, bribes, and nepotism have often been synonymous with politics in Turkey since Ottoman times”, she writes. “For many, they have become a natural part of the process”.

Pre-empting some of my thinking in my own piece a few days ago, she goes on to say that, “If not all at least some of the population are at best indifferent to those irregularities. It has been normalised within the public mindset and our culture”, adding with not a little degree of understatement: “This is a major problem”.

However, the fundamental problem, she asserts, is that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) is “holding both the drum and the stick”. “There is no separation of powers anymore. There is no real oversight. Even when irregularities are discovered, no legal action is taken. The government doesn’t want transparency. They don’t want people to know how their politics are financed”.

This devastating indictment of a supposedly modern state, goes on to specify in some detail the extent of corruption buried deep in the heart of the government, centred on five major companies in the construction sector.

“Tenders are being carried out without oversight. Irregularities and corruption go unpunished. The system is corrupted”, says Murat Ağırel, a journalist who was recently jailed for his work. “The problem is not the law”, says an unnamed professor of administrative law. “The problem is that the authorities are not willing to abide by the law”.

But this professor also points to the lack of public sensitivity and awareness of the issue, saying: “Who cares about who is getting which tender except some journalists and a few intellectuals. Corruption is not only in the government, but the society is also corrupt”.

Emboldened by the scale of the disaster and growing public anger, opposition parties are at last speaking out.

The main opposition CHP leader, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, speaking from the quake-stricken province of Hatay, is openly declaring that government corruption in the construction sector has exacerbated the tragedy. “I don’t ever see this issue (destruction caused by the earthquake) as something beyond politics”. We have come to this point because of Erdoğan’s politics, he says.

And if ever an example was needed, we have a report that no buildings were destroyed in Hatay’s Erzin district during the 6 February earthquakes.

Mayor Ökkeş Elmasoğlu announcing that there are no casualties in the district because he had not allowed illegal construction. Only some houses and the minarets of mosques were damaged in Erzin with a population of 42,000, even though Hatay was one of the provinces hit hardest by the earthquakes.

“I have not allowed illegal construction in any way”, Elmasoğlu, says. “Despite this, there were some who tried. Though we could not track them at first as we did not have enough personnel, we later reported them to the prosecutor’s office and we took demolition decisions”.

And yet, although the issue is dribbling into the British press, The Times doesn’t really get it. “Turkey’s shoddy builders sold a ‘piece of heaven’ that turned to hell”, it reports in today’s paper as if this was a low-level quality issue, rather than institutionalised corruption at the very heart of government.

This, really is the most troublesome aspect. It can’t be said that the local media and Turkish commentators are being wise after the event. Corruption is endemic and long-standing in Erdoğan’s government, so embedded in the construction industry that the disastrous casualty rate must be seen as an inevitable and predictable consequence.

This, therefore, is criminal manslaughter on an industrial scale, a scandal of epic proportions. But, with its preoccupation on domestic affairs and endless trivia, I cannot recall any detailed exposure in the popular media of what amounts to a failed state – and even now the corruption, where it is mentioned, is being soft-pedalled.

The media is so keen, at times, to comment on the affairs of other nations, and verges on the obsessive when it comes to US politics. But when it comes to “murderous corruption” in our own back yard, the silence becomes a macabre study in impotence.