By: Sienna Lovelock-Burtt
On the 6th of February, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck Southern and Central Turkiye, and Northern and Western Syria. It caused mass devastation and had a death toll of over 47,000 people. The aftershocks reverberated through the already damaged countries over the next few weeks and took another few hundred lives.
However, one question remains: was any of this necessary? As international aid floods into Turkiye and Syria, much of it too late to help with the rescue, and questions arise about the death toll. Turkiye’s death toll in particular has been attributed to the failure to meet building standards of many new buildings in Turkiye.
President Erdogan’s government came to power on a platform of economic growth and loosened regulations to ensure that could happen. 2003-2013 was an incredible period of growth for Turkiye, with per capita GDP almost tripling. Due to the growth, Turkiye also approved an unprecedented number of new buildings, especially in the less developed South of Turkiye, many of which did not meet safety standards.
Over the last few years, President Erdogan has become increasingly autocratic, brutally crushing an attempted coup in 2016. In what many saw as a bid to regain his popularity with the Turkish people in 2018 (an election year), he extended “zoning amnesty” to buildings that failed to meet code requirements. Many of the survivors point to this as the reason so many buildings collapsed, and so many people died in the earthquakes.
Given that this government is bordering on autocratic, and has willfully let its people suffer, what is the international response to the situation?
Immediate, short term, relief has been given, to provide for and rehome survivors. The UN has launched a $1.4 billion aid appeal, to cover the basic needs of survivors for five months.
There are ethical requirements to help these people who have faced an unfathomable disaster, but in the long term, as Turkiye begins to rebuild, is there still a moral requirement for us to help an autocratic government that has proved it does not care for its citizens' wellbeing?
If global aid does go towards rebuilding, should countries demand accountability for building standards? Perhaps that violates state sovereignty, but is there any other way to know that Turkiye isn’t hurtling back towards a disaster of similar proportions - not due to nature’s wrath, but due to the fallibility of human errors?
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