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There are moments, during horrific natural disasters such as the earthquake in Turkey and Syria, when you can witness the best that mankind is capable of — the noble behavior that often emerges during a crisis. The endless Twitter videos of dramatic rescues move me to tears. But then anger sets in.
While an earthquake is an act of nature, it’s not too soon to ask what contribution three leaders have made to the extent of the disaster. When it comes to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, and Vladimir Putin, that contribution is enormous. Untold numbers of victims will die unnecessarily because of what these three have done — or refused to do.
As the earthquake death toll mounts, longtime Turkish journalist and Washington Post columnist Asli Aydintasbas contends that Turkey’s earthquake may be more than just a natural disaster.
After a massive earthquake in 1999, she writes, the blame for many deaths “went to contractors who used cheap materials, officials who failed to enforce Turkey’s relatively loose building codes,” and “to a government that has failed to develop a … response strategy.”
Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party, known as AKP, rode to power shortly afterward, as the public demanded change. But over the past decade, corruption has flourished. Erdogan has favored friendly magnates from Turkey’s booming construction industry and disdained urban planners and environmentalists.
Many thousands of buildings crumbled immediately in earthquake-hit cities. Poorly built five-story apartment buildings pancaked into piles of concrete next door to damaged buildings that survived, perhaps due to older and better construction. Aided by Erdogan’s blind eye, corrupt builders using shoddy materials likely doomed Turkish citizens across the earthquake zone.
Meantime, across the border in Syria, the brutal Assad is responsible not only for much of the current Syrian death toll but also for the inability of international rescue teams to access the quake zone.
During Syria’s civil war, Assad’s planes bombed opposition and towns mercilessly, aided by the Russian air force of his ally, Vladimir Putin. Millions of refugees from the bombings flooded into the cities and towns of northern Syria, which are now being hit hardest by the earthquake and have almost no access to aid.
Since this northern region of Idlib is considered opposition territory by Assad, he managed, years ago, to limit the amount of humanitarian refugee aid that could be sent. When the United Nations tried to get Assad to permit more aid to flow in, Russia vetoed the attempt at the U.N. Security Council. So, as Syrian survivors in Idlib wander aimlessly in the snow, their flimsy housing destroyed, international aid agencies have no way to reach them unless Assad opens more crossings.
Turkey is scheduled to hold a general election in June. Erdogan has jailed the most popular opposition leader, but the president’s contribution to this disaster might increase popular support for the remaining opposition leaders. As for Assad, the test will be whether the United Nations can press him to permit aid to cross into Syria — and what he and Putin will demand as a price for this “humanitarian gesture.”
As earthquake casualties mount into the high thousands, one thing can be said for certain: Erdogan, Assad, and Putin are responsible for many of those deaths.
