What the commentators said
This region is “prone to earthquakes”, said Jenny Jenkins on The Conversation. Sitting at the intersection of three tectonic plates – the Anatolian, Arabian and African – it has suffered major disasters in the past, including in 1999 when the 7.6-magnitude Izmit earthquake killed about 18,000 people. But “this was a really big one”, the biggest since 1939, and struck at the relatively shallow depth of 11 miles (or six in the case of the aftershock) – with dire consequences.
This might have been a natural disaster, said Aslı Aydıntasbas in The Washington Post, but it was made immeasurably worse by poor quality construction work in cities that have rapidly expanded in the past few decades. “Across the region, there were many structures that stood firm, saving the lives of their occupants”, while others simply collapsed. Regulations introduced in 2019 were designed to ensure that buildings were quakeproof, but these are poorly enforced: Erdogan views the construction sector as the “crown jewel” of Turkey’s economy, encouraging a “tacit lack of oversight”, and public contracts tend to go to “government cronies”. In Syria, after years of brutal civil war, many people were already living in semi-ruined buildings, said Jonathan Yerushalmy in The Guardian. Millions more are displaced. For them, this latest disaster is likely to make an already dreadful situation immeasurably worse.
What a disastrous time for this tragedy to strike, said Tasneem Tayeb in The Daily Star (Dhaka). Syria’s government currently only allows aid into the country via one border point, and getting relief into rebel-held areas is likely to prove fiendishly difficult. Turkey, too, faces challenges: inflation in the country has soared to 85% in the past year; the Turkish lira is struggling; and Erdogan’s “generous” decision to open his country’s doors to some 3.6 million refugees is taking a toll on resources and his popularity. Turkey’s authoritarian leader was already facing a serious threat to his position in this year’s elections. If he fails to get a handle on this “new emergency” quickly, he’ll soon be in even more serious political peril.