Turkey has already entered a new era. Regardless of the outcome of the elections, once they are held, a new treaty is formed. Pre-existing contradictions and dynamics now come to the fore and cannot help but have their effects.
The earthquake itself is the biggest natural disaster Turkey has faced in decades and the biggest natural disaster Europe has faced in a century.
The cost of the earthquake is huge. Verisk, one of the largest risk modeling firms, estimates that the total economic damage in Turkey from the earthquakes will exceed $20 billion.
Of these damages, insurance coverage only covers about a billion dollars. This points to a cost of at least $20 billion that will have to be covered by the government.
Erdogan’s attempt to manage the anger against him
Erdogan has been the target of widespread criticism, not only from the opposition but also from much of society.
There are two main points of criticism he receives. The first concerns the major problems that existed in the timely mobilization of civil protection mechanisms. Because the Turkish government may have invested in the formation of a single civil protection agency, yet at the critical moment it appeared that it could not mobilize all the manpower and equipment that was available in time and be able to send rescue crews in time where they were needed.
The second concerned the problems with the construction of the buildings. This has been greatly contributed by the fact that in the affected areas many recently built buildings have collapsed, i.e. after the successive changes in the anti-seismic regulations brought about by the 1999 earthquake, buildings that several of them had been advertised to prospective buyers precisely on the basis of the supposedly anti-seismic their properties.
Erdogan has acknowledged delays in rescue missions and has tried to shift the blame for the buildings’ shoddy construction onto the builders and contractors themselves.
But it seems that it is not a given that this narrative “passes” down. And this is because Erdogan has been in charge of governing for several years so that he also has the political responsibility for the problems that appear. To what extent Turkish society considers him jointly responsible for the tragedy is one of the issues that will play a particularly crucial role in shaping the election result.
In any case, it is clear that the earthquake will judge a lot about how Turkish society perceives its relationship with the state, if the resulting problems will be the great moment of delegitimization of an entire model of state formation, a “hegemonic agenda” in essence that sealed the Erdogan era.
And this is because a major natural disaster is a moment of vulnerability for a society. This shatters narratives and tests the state’s ability to provide a sense of security. It can renew confidence in the leading political staff, it can also be the “end of an era” for Erdogan.
Aid and how it will affect Turkey’s international orientation
At the same time, the earthquake will play a role in how Turkey’s foreign policy moves. This includes, first of all, cases of “earthquake diplomacy”, that is, taking advantage of the solidarity offered to normalize bilateral relations. This is also typical in dealing with aid from Greece, but also cases such as aid from Armenia, and to a certain extent aid from Israel. Let’s note here that Turkey is a country that comparatively offers aid abroad and this is one side of its diplomacy.
However, this does not mean that simply offering help and being grateful for it signals a change in policy. In this sense, it is an open question whether we will have a new “earthquake diplomacy” according to the standards of 1999 in Greek-Turkish relations. It is still early, however, everything indicates that the tones will fall, but there does not seem to be a similar dynamic of re-approach. And this is because the moment of “earthquake diplomacy” of 1999 coincided with a mood of mutual concessions and a climate of seeking compromises by both countries that lasted until 2004 and was then gradually abandoned. That is, a new “earthquake diplomacy” requires both Greece and Turkey to shift from positions that have been fixed for years.
As for Turkey’s international orientation, the question is which countries will want to help rebuild Turkey, beyond humanitarian aid missions, although there are also interesting elements such as the enhanced presence of both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, beyond traditional allies of Erdogan such as Qatar.
Ostensibly at least, it is a great opportunity for the West to “win” Turkey again, and to some extent this has been framed as a necessity. However, the problem is that the West, namely the US and the EU, do not have such developed aid mechanisms to provide the scale of aid that is needed. This is a problem they faced, after all, in trying to respond to China’s One Belt One Road strategy. They can contribute at the “donor meeting” level, or at the “buyers” level, but not with direct programs of their own.
This creates a margin for countries that would anyway like to invest in this reconstruction process, such as the Persian countries in the first place. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar have the resources and willingness to invest in them. Of course, there is always China, which also has the loan mechanism to contribute. On the other hand, it is clear that Turkey will also want to maintain balance in all of this, since such forms of “solidarity” always have an element of forming dependencies.
However, one can assume that around the reconstruction aid there will be a wider competition that will also have tomorrow’s geopolitical orientation of Turkey as a dispute.
The “troubled” Turkish economy and the lurking IMF
All this will be judged by the state of the Turkish economy itself. Let’s not forget that Turkey is a country with high inflation, a decline in the currency rate (which only recently stopped mainly because the slippage of the rate was less than inflation), high unemployment and of course all the distortions that, among other things, led to the disasters of so many buildings, which we must not forget were built within a logic that wanted the construction industry to be the engine of growth.
The earthquake itself creates an immediate blow as problems in such a large area will lead to a decline in GDP. On the other hand, rapid rates of reconstruction can be an element of developmental dynamics, with the final balance having to do with the dynamism of the process.
But, one way or another, the reconstruction process requires an increase in public spending that will also translate into widening deficits and an increase in public debt. Although Turkey does not have an exorbitant public debt (although it does have significant private debt), a combination of higher debt and higher deficits could nevertheless create a condition that in a relatively short period of time could even bring back the question of the IMF’s return to Turkey . And then, of course, a peculiar historical cycle will have been closed, if we consider that Erdogan was proud of being the politician who expelled the IMF from Turkey.
