Turkish internet bites back at state after deadly quake
ISTANBUL, Feb 18, (AFP) - Nothing is ever deleted or forgotten on the internet. Turkish officials learned that the hard way when grieving users began sharing old tweets and videos embarrassing for the government after last week’s disastrous earthquake.
One clip shows President Recep Tayyip Erdogan congratulating officials for adopting an amnesty law in 2018 forgiving faults in nearly six million buildings that failed safety regulations.
Filmed during rallies in Hatay, Kahramanmaras and Malatya -- all areas badly affected by the February 6 disaster -- Erdogan boasted that he had “solved the problem” for residents to stay in their homes.
Erdogan’s popularity over his two-decade rule rested on his ability to create an affluent new middle class and modern, affordable housing in an underdeveloped region. But those comments, while wellreceived by people who avoided losing their homes at the time, now look ill-conceived.
Experts say that contractors’ failure to comply with building codes in the earthquake-prone region explain the huge death toll, which has climbed above 38,000 in Turkey and approached 3,700 in Syria.
“Buildings kill people, not earthquakes. We must learn to live with earthquakes... and take measures accordingly,” Erdogan tweeted in 2013, when he was prime minister. That tweet has now been shared thousands of times.
Opposition and independent media have published images and reports damaging for the government, but these never make it on Turkish television news. Mainstream channels broadcast a continuous loop of rescue footage in the first 10 days.
Turkish rescuers on Saturday pulled three people, including a child, alive from the rubble 13 days after a massive quake claimed tens of thousands of lives, but one later died, local media reported. Teams have been finding survivors all week despite them being stuck for so long under the rubble in freezing weather, but their numbers have dropped to just a handful in the past few days.
More than 140 trucks carrying desperately-needed aid have crossed into rebelheld northwestern Syria from Turkey, the United Nations said. Eleven days after the quake that killed more than 41,000 people in Turkey and Syria, the situation in Syria’s rebel-held northwest remains dire due to the slow arrival of aid to a region ravaged by years of conflict.