After Earthquake, Turks’ Disgust With Government Offset by Improved Image of Themselves

By Jon P. Gorvett

When our bus ground finally to a halt in a pile of rubble in central Izmit, some 50 miles east of Istanbul, on the night of Aug. 17, it was still difficult to judge the magnitude of the huge catastrophe that had hit this urbanized, densely populated region of Turkey just 17 hours earlier.

In pitch black streets, a few survivors stood in the headlights of the bus watching as others picked through what was left of a six-story apartment house. With no electricity, the only more general illumination was from the orange-yellow flames boiling up from the naphthalene tanks burning out of control at the city’s refinery.

With the light of day, it became obvious that this quake, which measured some 7.4 on the Richter scale, had been completely overwhelming.

What also rapidly became obvious in the following couple of days was that the Turkish state was nowhere to be found.

One phrase often repeated by survivors, many of them grieving relatives and friends of the thousands who died (the expected final toll is between 35,000 and 40,000, according to U.N. figures) was “Where is the state?” A fair enough question in a country with a culture that has always seen a big, paternalistic authority as something to look to, particularly in a crisis.

Yet in some of the earthquake-struck towns, cities and villages, survivors complained of not seeing any police or army for several days after the disaster hit. The government appeared also in shock and the people of the earthquake zone—which stretched over 3,500 square miles—were often left entirely to their own devices.

One exception to this isolation was foreign aid—initially search-and-rescue teams—with 19 Western countries sending immediate disaster relief in the form of specialist teams within 24 hours of the quake happening.

The Muslim world rallied too—with 18 Muslim countries sending assistance of one kind or another. The contrast in the speedy response from abroad—often from nations with which Turkey has had a long history of antagonism—and the slowness of official domestic help left many Turks angry and in protest. The Turkish media were also uninhibited in reporting this, causing government ire which included the punitive closure for a week of one particularly outspoken TV channel.

There was also anger at the shoddy, cowboy construction companies who had built many of the buildings that had collapsed with scant, if any, regard for regulations. The earthquake region has long been known as a danger spot for earth tremors, with a major quake occurring at least once a century. Yet paper laws on safe building practices were routinely ignored—with local municipalities charged with enforcing such codes turning an enormous blind eye.

“What do I think of these construction techniques?” said Dr. Berest Tomas of the Hungarian rescue team operating in the massively hit town of Golcuk. “This is what I think,” and he pulled a steel concrete reinforcing bar from the rubble before snapping it across his leg in a single movement. “This is not steel,” he said.

Yet now, with rescue teams having abandoned the search and the bulldozers moving in to sweep the wreckage into the Sea of Marmara, which borders many of the earthquake-struck towns and cities, feelings are beginning to turn towards some assessment of what next.

Prosecution of constructors is widely talked of, but privately few lawyers have much hope that the legal system as it stands will be able to deliver any major prosecutions or win much in the way of compensation for the quake’s estimated 500,000 homeless. A new amnesty law for prisoners being debated by parliament also looks set to lighten the load on many contractors if they are ever successfully prosecuted.

Beyond this, too, lies the problem of wider culpability. The contractors may have built badly, but the authorities let them do it. In this too, “no one can say they are completely clean,” says the respected columnist for the daily newspaper Radikal, Haluk Sahin. “This goes all the way from the contractors to the political establishment as a whole. The Islamists won’t gain because many of the new buildings that collapsed were built during periods when they were in office.”

The earthquake will also have wide economic implications. The provinces which the earthquake hit are responsible for some 35 percent of Turkey’s GDP. The Izmit refinery of the state refining company, Tupras, part of which suffered considerable fire damage, accounts for some one-third of the country’s refining capacity. According to Tupras officials, it will not be operational for at least four months.

The cost of rebuilding has also been officially put at $20 billion, around 10 percent of the country’s GDP. Turkey was already suffering from a growth slowdown in the last half of 1998 and the first half of 1999, and although the economics minister, Recep Onal, claimed 10 days after the quake that the economy would press ahead as before, other economists put recovery more in the lap of international help. An IMF delegation is expected soon to visit and assess the damage, and Onal was hopeful that the disaster would secure more aid for Turkey in terms of larger credits.

But perhaps potentially the most serious long-term effect of the quake, and one which is still difficult to assess, will be political. In a country where criticism of the authorities, and particularly the army, has in the past carried severe penalties, the quake has seen a remarkable openness amongst many ordinary Turks in their criticism.

Concurrent with this has also been a remarkable outpouring of energy directed toward self-organization. Left to their own devices, Turks responded en masse to the quake in trying to help out and in setting up NGOs to direct food and fresh water supplies, establish field kitchens and hospitals and set up work teams to search and clear the rubble.

This development may be the fault line that one day cracks open a whole series of features in contemporary Turkish society. As the parliament, just 10 days after the quake, voted to go on holiday for the summer, and the army—currently the biggest in Europe—excused its late arrival on the grounds that roads were congested with traffic, many Turks’ perception of the state was undoubtedly quite different from what it had been before the quake. How this plays out in the months to come is uncertain, but does produce one small hope for greater openness out of the rubble.

Jon P. Gorvett is a free-lance journalist based in Istanbul.

SIDEBAR

The Story Americans Didn’t Read in Their Media: Eighteen Muslim Countries Sent Rescue Teams and Aid to Turkey

ISTANBUL: “We remembered the earthquake in Cairo in 1992,” says Brigadier Sami Mohammed of the Egyptian army in a makeshift office in the basement of Adapazar’s soccer stadium. “We felt from deep in our hearts that we must hurry.”

And hurry they did, with Mohammed’s team of 120 Egyptian doctors, nurses and rescue workers arriving in the disaster zone within a day of the quake striking. They found a city in chaos, with most of its central area flattened or on the verge of collapse.

The Egyptians promptly established a field hospital on the stadium’s pitch, the wounded being helicoptered in by the Turkish army, and even set up a bakery to supply bread for the thousands of homeless and injured under their care.

“We’ll be here for as long as necessary,” Mohammed said, adding that another 80 Egyptian aid workers were on the way and at least one Egyptian planeload of equipment and supplies was arriving daily. “These are our Muslim brothers,” he continued, “of course we must help them.”

Aid to Turkey from Muslim countries was a largely untouched story here, though, as the rescue teams and resources of Western countries grabbed the limelight. Yet aid kept coming.

According to official Turkish figures, as of Aug. 28, Algeria had sent a 40-strong team of medical and rescue workers and a planeload of emergency supplies. Bahrain had sent 40 tons of humanitarian assistance, with heir to the throne Prince Abdullah Bin Hamad touring the disaster zone. Bangladesh had sent a medical team and $65,000 of aid. Iraq had pledged to pump as much oil as Turkey needs down the Turco-Iraqi pipeline. In contributing 500,000 barrels of crude oil, a gift worth $10 million, Iraqi officials explained this was the best way for them to help since they cannot contribute cash or relief commodities because of the U.N. embargo. Iran had sent 100 tons of aid. Kuwait had sent 12 rescuers, 20 planeloads of aid and the National Bank of Kuwait had opened an emergency relief fund account.

Malaysia sent a rescue team of 24 people, Morocco a team of 38 medical experts, along with 900 tents, 6,000 blankets and medical equipment, Pakistan 200 tons of relief material—with a visit by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. The Saudis sent 70 tons of food, tents, blankets and medicine.

Syria, for long seen as an antagonistic neighbor by Turkey, sent five planeloads of aid and medical experts to go with it. The UAE carried out a week-long airlift of aid supplies.

Central Asian Muslim countries also helped out. Azerbaijan sent 25 rescuers and 23 medical experts, a fire-fighting team and four tons of chemicals, aid worth $100,000 and 2,000 tons of fuel—the rescue teams being led in person by Azeri Deputy Prime Minister Abid Sherifov. Kazakhstan sent a 20-strong search-and-rescue team and heavy equipment to go with them. Kyrgyzstan also sent a 23-strong rescue team. Turkmenistan made a donation of $100,000, and Uzbekistan sent a team of 25 rescuers with heavy lifting equipment.

“To begin with, the cases were all earthquake-related,” continued Egyptian Brigadier Mohammed. “Now, we are seeing ‘normal’ cases too. We have even delivered babies.”

The Egyptian team included veterans of other disasters too—and other U.N.-based relief operations in Africa, Bosnia and Cambodia.

“But here is the worst,” said Mohammed. “Our rescue team worked on the Serdogan building—a huge complex that collapsed here. For seven days we worked, but nobody. Nobody alive anyway. We found 10 dead. Really, this is the worst.”

With rain and floods hampering the relief effort and adding additional misery to the survivors, often camped out in makeshift shelters or the old, Korean War vintage tents of the Turkish Red Crescent, the mud seemed a long way from Cairo.

Mohammed shrugged. “We’re soldiers. We have our job. We do it, however long it takes.”

The U.S. media may not have been unique in neglecting to point up Arab and Muslim aid while devoting extensive coverage to the prompt arrival of Israeli rescue and medical personnel, and human interest coverage to the warm welcome individual Turks gave to Greek and Greek Cypriot rescue personnel.

The Saudi consul in Istanbul publicly charged that there had been a blackout of Turkish media overage of Arab aid, a charge privately echoed by foreign journalists. Ecmettin Altintas, a spokesman for Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit, retorted that “I have heard of no such thing. No country has been ignored nor has any been emphasized.” Nevertheless, as charges also surfaced that the Turkish government had refused some categories of help from both Greece and traditional enemy Armenia, it appeared that the Turkish people, but not their floundering government, had their priorities straight.