One year on, Turkish quake survivors face uncertainty as government struggles with reconstruction

Turkey’s government is scrambling to prove it has fulfilled promises to re-home victims of a devastating earthquake from February 2023. But a year on, survivors are still in temporary housing, facing the prospect of having to buy their potential new homes.

The 7.8 magnitude earthquake that struck the country in the early morning of 6 February 2023 was modern Turkey’s deadliest natural disaster, killing more than 53,000 people in the country and nearly 6,000 in neighbouring Syria. Millions more were left homeless.

Last spring, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan promised the survivors new homes in under twelve months, coinciding with the presidential election campaign. Erdoğan was reelected a few months later with a significant number of votes from the earthquake-impacted south-eastern regions.

Across those areas, heavy machinery moved in to demolish condemned homes and businesses, container-made villages were set up, and government-funded new buildings slowly emerged from the ground.

But as the 12-month deadline came and went, the promises are far from being met.

Erdoğan’s promises

The politics of earthquake-related relief and aid are “extremely important” for Erdoğan in the run-up to the 31 March local elections, Berk Esen, associate professor of political science at Sabancı University, told Euractiv.

“That is why Erdoğan is pushing the propaganda battle to voters that his government cares, has undertaken this reconstruction effort, and is about to finish these new buildings,” he said.

According to Professor Kamil Yilmaz, only 75,364 new buildings have been completed to date, he wrote on X.

In the hardest-hit areas, Erdoğan pledged 300,000 new homes in one year, aiming for a total of over 680,000, and said they would be available for their ‘rightful owners’, starting on the day of the anniversary of the catastrophe.

From the ground, however, it is clear that despite the flurry of announcements and large numbers given to the press, Ankara’s government is struggling to make good on its word.

Reality on the ground

For example, in the city of Antakya, in the Hatay province, what was promised and what has been realised are a gulf apart.

The earthquake saw some 70% of the city’s buildings wiped off the map, and in its aftermath, over half of the 400 container camps in the country were set up here.

Driving through the city centre a year later, rubble is still everywhere and only a handful of buildings remain standing, and many of those are slated for demolition.

According to Yilmaz, the authorities promised some 254,195 new homes in Hatay and a further 41,922 in neighbouring Gaziantep. But to date, just 4,1% and 36,2% of the announced homes, respectively, have been completed.

The question of when they will be ready and delivered has been asked repeatedly by the media, but the government has so far been unable to provide a clear answer.

The governor of Hatay, Mustafa Masatli, told the press on Friday (2 February) that hundreds of thousands of homes are under construction but fell short of saying when exactly they would be ready.

Meanwhile, his counterpart in Gaziantep, Kemal Çebers, was equally non-committal, saying that some 10,000 would be finished by the anniversary of the disaster and all 25,000 who lost their accommodation would be rehomed by September.

“We’re trying to remove the term ‘disaster’ from the city’s memory” and “guarantee a return to normal in the quickest way”, he told reporters without providing details on exact dates citizens would get keys to their new homes.

An even more worrying issue for citizens is the fact they will have to purchase their new homes. It remains uncertain how much they will have to pay, or where they will find the funds.

At first, the government provided free temporary accommodation, such as containers and tents, but homes built by the state-run Housing Development Administration (TOKI) will have to be purchased, local authorities told international reporters last week.

This will force citizens who have lost everything to find the money or take out loans to move into the new builds.

Despite previously suggesting the properties would be for free, the governor of Hatay conceded to journalists that they would have to be paid for but that citizens would be given a few months or even years’ grace period before having to pay back loans.

But because the victims have lost everything, including their jobs, in the catastrophe, thousands of new buildings could easily become ghost towns. Erdoğan himself is expected to announce the price of the buildings, local authorities in Gaziantep said.

Broken promises

After comparing the numbers of announced and new buildings, Hürcan Asli Aksoy, head of the Centre for Applied Turkey Studies (CATS) in Berlin, told Euractiv that “the AKP government cannot keep its promises”.

“However, the [government] does not accept these facts and claims that it is building 200,000 homes and will continue to build up to 850,000 homes and shops,” she added.

Hürcan Asli Aksoy said reasons such as budget cuts, rising construction costs, economic uncertainty, and bureaucratic obstacles “are slowing down the construction of thousands of flats”.

Danger of voting anti-Erdoğan 

For Erdoğan, the reconstruction is a platform for his campaign and leverage against his opponents. 

The Turkish press reported that Erdoğan had said he would stop assistance to provinces that will fall into the opposition’s hands in local elections, due in March.

Voters are perceived as more likely to vote for Erdoğan’s party instead of venturing to the opposition or the Islamist party, as the earthquake-hit zones are already conservative AKP strongholds, the party of Erdogan’s government.

For Esen Berk, “during a moment of crisis, authoritarian leaders tend to consolidate support because many voters realise that they will get access to some assistance, that they still depend on the leader”. “In fact, their dependence has grown.”

“When you lost everything, you’re not in a position to risk more – you may decide not to rock the boat, hoping to get something, at least,” Berk said.

A building in Hatay province is waiting to be destroyed. [Aurélie Pugnet]

In Hatay province, Ebru, 80, lost almost everything: house, furniture, family members. “I have nothing,” she told Euractiv.

“I do not know when we will get a house,” Ebru sighed as her friends Emel and Burcu nodded in agreement.

The three elderly women said they got 10,000 Turkish lira once (€305) and then another 15,000 lira payment (€460) for the move from the rubbles of their house to the container, as the government promised but said that for many with no job, it is difficult to live.

Displaced Turks got ration cards to shop at the social market, worth 500 points per person per month, according to the authorities. But buying a 70-points-worth bag of rice is not that easy, as most of the people who talked to Euractiv had received less money than expected.

Uncertain future

Until the reconstruction is finished, families will stay in more than 400 small container settlements and a handful of tent sites, which the state built as a temporary solution throughout the 11 provinces impacted by the earthquake.

For Suna, 18, like for others in Gaziantep, those tents are still necessary. The teenager’s house is still standing, albeit barely. 

“At home, we are afraid because the house is shaking,” Suna told Euractiv. She is scared another earthquake will hit and her home will collapse, burying her alive.

She still sleeps in the tents behind her house, she says. In that neighbourhood, she is not the only one.

Some scared villagers in Gaziantep prefer to sleep in tents than their homes. [Aurélie Pugnet]

According to the government, the reconstruction will cost around €107 billion – and the EU and other Western countries have pledged €7 billion in emergency aid.

“No one can fill the void left by those who lost their lives, yet together we can reconstruct and rebuild,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said ahead of a donors’ conference in Brussels in March 2023.

She called for “homes, schools and hospitals” destroyed in the earthquakes to be rebuilt “with the highest standards of seismic safety.”

In Gaziantep province, the governorship is “trying to make sure to build an earthquake-resistant city”, and “all the planning will be made accordingly [to the risks]”, the governor told reporters.

[Edited by Alice Taylor/Zoran Radosavljevic]

Read more with Euractiv

Scholz brings to Washington EU’s Ukraine aid example

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will try to build on the momentum from Europe's success in agreeing new aid for war-torn Ukraine when he heads to Washington this week, where President Joe Biden is struggling to overcome opposition to a US package.