It is impossible to exaggerate the material destruction that fell on Turkey in the early hours of February 6, beyond the tragedy, with more than 50,000 identified deaths. One and a half million displaced people had to seek refuge in the cities of western Turkey and hundreds of thousands of people will live for more than a year in precarious camps.
It has been estimated that the damage caused by the earthquake could be close to 100,000 million euros. In a country with its currency under pressure, reserves in free fall and rampant inflation, the earthquake seemed like the last straw, given the poor response during critical hours. None of that has happened.
And where least, in the hardest-hit areas, “conservative and nationalist”, according to the sociologist K. Murat Güney. "Ideology and beliefs do not change from one day to the next." To this we must add practical reasons: “The reconstruction works have already begun and the residents trust that whoever started them will finish them. In addition, the government has guaranteed them, through the housing agency or public banks, low-interest loans." Although the opposition promised them that it would rebuild for free, they were not believed.
According to Güney, these Turks, like others, fear that a finance minister eager to return to the arms of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and its recipes – like the economic czar of the opposition, Ali Babacan – will burden the sacrifices on the popular classes. .
Having said this, Güney also blames the opposition for not having known how to win over this population. “They have promised little and worked less. They believed that Erdogan was going to fall under his own weight, due to economic conditions.
The head of a Catalan multinational confirms that factories with which it works in Gaziantep "have lost workers, because their houses have been damaged and they have left."
On the other hand, a banker with many years in Turkey observes that what many well-intentioned speeches do is cover up the social structure of one of the most unequal and class-oriented countries in Europe. “We already know that not a single lawyer has voted for Erdogan. But this is not Athenian democracy, but one person, one vote." In addition, he adds, “in Turkey there is not much state to cut. There are few officials. People have to make a living. Also those who will no longer become ambassadors, but who keep their second family residence in the Aegean”.
The AKP can be blamed for the fact that, despite its righteous speech, the distribution of income has not changed in ten years. Although in the rest of the world it has almost always moved for the worse.
"A Turk works with me who was exhausted this winter because he said he had not been able to go skiing in France, with his lyre on the ground," the banker continues amused. “But do you think that matters to Erdogan? What interests him is conserving power and for that, instead of cutting taxes for the rich, what he has done has been to raise the minimum salary of civil servants by 45%”.
"How are you going to pay for it? That's where the tricks start. Because he has burned the reserves. What's more, the new middle class that he fostered, later he has pulverized it with the crisis ”.
However, Turkey grows more than most countries criticize it. “But it's not healthy growth. It's consumerism. Buy now because tomorrow will be more expensive.
If the opposition idealizes Erdogan's early days, appropriating Babacan, his Economy Minister at the time, the AKP threatens to recover his successor -until 2015- Mehmet Simsek, who calms the markets.
It should be said that seismologists predict a great earthquake in Istanbul. That hasn't stopped it from becoming a real estate piggy bank with "750,000 empty flats, many new, high-end investment ones," according to the council. In many cases, money from the Middle East and Central Asia, not unlike Turkish money seeking solace in the West.
