‘Quake city’ won’t vote for Erdogan

“WE NEED change, we’ve had enough,” said Mehmet Topaloglu, one of the first to cast his ballot on Sunday in the southern Turkish city of Antakya, destroyed by this year’s devastating earthquake.

For Topaloglu, the 7.8-magnitude February tremor that killed more than 50,000 people in Turkey and the economic situation have changed the nature of the polls, which could end President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s more than two- decade grip on power.

“I voted Erdogan for his first two terms, but I won’t vote for him again, even if he were my father,” the farmer told AFP at an Antakya school used as a polling center.

Semra Karakas and her 23-year-old daughter Aylin endured a 14-hour bus ride to return to Antakya for the vote, after the quake forced them to leave and settle in the southern coastal city of Antalya.

Speaking by containers acting as improvised polling stations, Aylin said the earthquake – and the state’s inadequate response to the emergency – reaffirmed her choice in the race between two presidential frontrunners, Erdogan and his secular rival Kemal Kilicdaroglu.

“The state didn’t come to our aid. They came three or four days afterwards,” added the architecture student, who thinks support for the conservative Erdogan in Antakya’s Hatay province will “fall a lot.”

Semras recalled the images of dead babies lying in the rubble, some of whom perished due to the cold temperatures, and said the “catastrophe” would affect the polls.

Medical worker Deryer Deniz, 35, has lived in cramped conditions in a tent since the tragedy, and thinks this year’s elections “are much more important.”