The gleaming black sedan wound through the epicentre of Turkey’s deadly earthquake in the town of Pazarcık. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s car glistened in the sunlight as the Turkish president passed citizens burning fires to keep warm in the freezing cold among towering piles of rubble that were once their homes.
Erdoğan limited his interactions with the public in Pazarcık, instead driving directly to the local police headquarters to discuss the aftermath of the multiple massive tremors that left a trail of destruction over 10 Turkish provinces and across northern Syria, trapping people underneath collapsed buildings and killing more than 20,000. When he did stop to speak briefly to the area’s shattered and distraught residents, it was to double down on the notion that the quake was solely responsible for the devastation, rather than poorly constructed buildings linked to corruption, or a rescue response beset by delays.
“What happens, happens, this is part of fate’s plan,” he told one person in Pazarcık, echoing his statements just months earlier after a deadly mining disaster at a state-run coalmine, where the president blamed “fate’s design”, for an explosion that left at least 41 dead. During a speech in nearby Kahramanmaraş, Erdoğan also lashed out at “provocateurs” who criticised rescue efforts, adding: “Of course, there are shortcomings. The conditions are clear to see. It’s not possible to be ready for a disaster like this.”
People who lined the streets of Pazarcık sobbing as they waited to see their dead relatives pulled from the rubble – rather than to catch a glimpse of the president’s motorcade – disagreed, as did those in other badly hit towns, who shouted angrily at Turkey’s infrastructure minister and a local official during a visit.
“If there was more help, they’d manage to get them out,” said Ayşe Kep, staring across the main road in Pazarcık as a small team of rescue workers clambered atop slabs of broken concrete and metal that once made up a residential building, a crushed flatbed truck protruding from the wreckage. Kep and other residents watched desperately in the faint hope that their family members might somehow be found alive.
“We are here to wait for the funerals,” she said grimly. “I only have hope, but I still don’t believe they’re alive. My cousin is under there, and these rescue workers didn’t arrive until today. But it’s worse in my village, there’s no electricity or water, no help at all.”
Erdoğan’s refusal to accept criticism of the state’s response has done little to quell growing public anger at a disaster response that has often arrived too late, or in the case of some remote villages, appears yet to have arrived at all. Across southern Turkey – areas traditionally considered bastions of support for the president and his Justice and Development party (AKP) – displaced citizens surviving in freezing conditions complained openly about delays and sleeping in the cold despite the state’s promises . Their increasing discontent represents an unforeseen and major test for Erdoğan’s 20-year leadership, just three months prior to an election expected in May.
“Erdoğan has an image he’s cultivated in the last 20 years, it’s both sweet and sour: he’s autocratic, but effective, a patriarchal figure almost replacing what used to be called devlet baba, the fatherly state. This is why his base loves him and his opponents fear him – his wrath is serious as much as his compassion is real. That’s his whole brand, which is now being tested,” said Soner Cagaptay of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and author of several books on Erdoğan’s leadership. “It’s remarkable as Erdoğan replaced another overarching, autocratic fatherly state which essentially collapsed following another massive earthquake in 1999.”
The state’s lacklustre response to the 1999 İzmit earthquake helped propel Erdoğan and the AKP to power in 2003, where the young and enigmatic figure promised efficiency and care to heal the country’s wounds following a disaster that killed over 17,000 people. The İzmit earthquake, which destroyed part of Istanbul and loomed large over Turkey’s recent history as the country’s largest natural disaster until this week, prompted the introduction of a tax to provide economic support after disasters, which experts estimated to total about £3.8bn – raising questions from opposition politicians as to how that money has been spent in the years since.
The two-decade reign of the AKP has been marked by a nationwide construction boom, as Erdoğan worked to transform a country once beset by widespread infrastructure and housing issues, promising economic and social transformation in the process. In the years immediately following his election, government permits for housing construction tripled. Skyscrapers, bridges and smooth tarmac roads spread across the vast country, as a handful of construction companies with ties to the government grew powerful while the new infrastructure demonstrated the state’s presence even in the most remote cities.
Many of the same concrete apartment blocks built as part of the AKP’s construction boom were razed to the ground by the earthquake earlier this week. In Kahramanmaraş, some of the new towers remained standing while others on the same block had collapsed entirely, a grim showcase of which constructions had conformed to building codes intended to prevent them from collapse in the event of tremors.
During a speech in the town, Erdoğan promised that new homes to replace destroyed buildings would be constructed across the 10 affected regions within a year, a pledge that appeared hard to fathom as emergency teams struggled to pick through towering piles of rubble with little prospect of clearing it in sight.
Instead, the message from the presidential palace appears to be one born of fear and control in the quake’s aftermath, amid reports that Turkey briefly blocked Twitter, which citizens had been using to locate lost loved ones amid the rubble. On state television, a reporter turned her back on a person in Kahramanmaraş who described delays in aid delivery, instead reassuring viewers that “there are still places workers are unable to reach” in the town. After touring areas destroyed by the quake and its aftershocks, Erdoğan described the state of emergency allowing him to bypass the rule of law in the 10 affected regions as “an opportunity to foil moneylenders and seditious groups who abuse due process in Turkey”.
Cagaptay said the presidency had opted to focus on control, rather than compassion. “The argument that Turkey needs an effective if autocratic leader falls apart if people say the state isn’t there when they need it,” he said. “His base is going to have a hard time accepting the autocratic part of his political identity without effective relief after the earthquake.”
He added: “He’s trying to double down on the fear factor in the hope it doesn’t vanish, as once it goes away and citizens aren’t afraid of Erdoğan, that’s a very different Turkey.”
In Pazarcık, Kep looked on despondently as she watched mechanical diggers and volunteers continue to scrabble among the remains of her relatives’ apartment block. She turned to warm herself by a small fire surrounded by mourning people. “No one is helping us,” she said, moments before the president’s motorcade passed.
