Turkey is now wrestling with shock and grief and with the dawning realisation of just how large a task it will be to rebuild in the wake of devastating natural disaster. It is also struggling with an uncomfortable truth – that the quake has, with vicious accuracy, sought out not only weaknesses in the earth but fault lines within society itself. Ankara must cope with the criticism that it failed both to plan for a disaster and to react when it struck.
I wrote the above paragraph nearly 25 years ago, in the aftermath of an earthquake near Istanbul which claimed at least 17,000 lives. And yet it remains cruelly apposite in the tide of devastation and recriminations that have followed the twin earthquakes earlier this month.
Turkey cannot help but wonder if a political shift is about to happen again
Infamously, the 1999 quake destroyed the reputation of a whole political generation – including the then powerful Turkish military, who during the crucial first days of the rescue effort, sat on their hands as the catastrophe unfolded.
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