The most impressive element of the visit to the regions between Turkey and Syria three months after the earthquake is precisely the extension of the area affected by the earthquake.
Türkiye, on the edge of disaster
george brizio
They are ten the most affected Turkish cities from the one that according to the Peking University study published in the journal Earthquake Science it was the most intense pair of tremors ever recorded on the mainland: Diyarbakir, Sanlıurfa, Gaziantep, Kahramanmaras, Adana – these are names unknown to us, but almost all of them have more than two million inhabitants.
Then there’s the Hatay province, a strip of land that extends further south than a piece of Syria. The access roads to this area, which again experienced a magnitude 5 quake on Sunday, were armored yesterday and with very long queues due to a stop on Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s electoral tour.
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In fact, there are two days left elections in Türkiyeand in recent months the outgoing President has been using all the government tools in his power to try to make a comeback in the polls: he has raised the minimum wage threshold several times, increased the salaries of civil servants, built refugee camps with better services for citizens Turks.
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In Antakya, the capital of the province of Hatay, people of Syrian origin have been displaced in the AFAD tents, while those of Turkish origin in fields equipped with containers. Fortunately, this is not the case everywhere: in Nurdaği, the civil protection welcomed everyone without distinction.
One of the tents of the Turkish Emergencies and Disasters Authority
People I meet ask me not to talk about the election, they have fear of possible retaliation. In the southern regions of the country, the electorate has been divided in recent years mainly between the AKP led by Erdogan and the pro-Kurdish HDP. The latter suffered a strong attack at the end of April: 126 of its representatives and figures connected to it were arrested in 21 different provinces.
Since a process of possible closure of the party has been initiated, to protect themselves all HDP candidates will run with the list of the left environmentalist YSP which, despite being estimated at over 10%, has chosen not to present a candidate for President, not supporting but in fact supporting Kemal Kilicdaroglu .
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Yesterday in a similar way Muharrem Ince, three days before the vote and with the ballot papers ready, has decided to withdraw his candidacy arguing that he has no intention of being held responsible for the failure of the opposition. However here Kilicdaroglu, despite his various visits to Kurdish majority areas, does not seem able to give hope for a better future than the current situation.
Now from months to Murdaği, except for the emptiness and desolation between one intact building and another that has widened, everything has remained stationary. Mohammed still has the clock that fell from his wall at home after the first quake: it strikes about 4:15 in the morning. He doesn’t speak English but has a T-shirt that says “Great”, and smaller “Dreams rest forever”. Behind him, a gigantic electoral poster and the houses that the government has promised to make usable in the autumn stand out – they too have become electoral promises.
The rise to power of Recep Tayyip Erdogan it began after the earthquake of August 1999 and marked the following two decades. Who knows if this geophysical and political earthquake will decide the next two.