Fires will be Erdoğan’s ‘Gölcük Earthquake’

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A 7.5-magnitude earthquake, with Gölcük district in Kocaeli as its epicenter, hit Turkey on August 17, 1999. According to official figures, 17 thousand 480 people lost their lives, 23 thousand 781 people were wounded, 285 thousand 211 houses and 42 thousand workplaces were damaged. According to unofficial figures, the losses were much more heart-wrenching.

However, this terrible disaster had a political dimension, too. It manifested the incapability of the coalition government formed by the Democratic Left Party (DSP), Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and Motherland Party (ANAP) and chaired by Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit, thereby showing the incapability of the state as well. It also served as a harbinger of the political earthquake that would hit Turkey three years later.

In fact, since the state did not provide the earthquake victims with the much-needed help, it was mostly ordinary citizens who were compelled to bring water, food, medicine and clothes to the region and to even dig the collapsed buildings and take out the wounded and deceased. This undermined the people's trust in the state, in both the civil and military institutions of the state, leading to a desire for a radical change in people.

When the 10-percent electoral threshold was taken into consideration as well, small-scale parties were completely eliminated in the general elections in 2002 and the Justice and Development Party (AKP), which had just been established, came to power with an overwhelming majority.

I am of the opinion that the terrible fires that the whole Turkey has been watching with bated breath (and not in the metaphorical sense of the word!) will have a similar effect. Having based its every single decision on personal interests and/or ideology, the AKP government has failed miserably when it has been faced with a real, not a fictional, "state of emergency".

The government and the pro-government media have tried to change the agenda and confuse people with debates on who is to blame, asking whether it is the Turkish Aeronautical Association (THK), municipalities or the ministry, but the result is obvious: In the face of the biggest crisis they have ever experienced in 22 years, citizens cannot find the state on their side; they have been forced to fill plastic bottles with water to put out the fires. All those beautiful forests have burned to the ground, millions of animals have died, numerous people have lost their houses, shelters, workplaces and cultivated lands, they have been deprived of their daily bread.

There is something that highly upsets the people who believe that they have the "right" ideology: Ideology doesn't fill the bellies. So, the fact that the AKP government is getting more and more oppressive and trampling upon freedom of expression, the rule of law and human rights further and further is unfortunately not the primary priority of the people who are fearing for their daily bread. But how much longer can a government stay in power while it throws packages of tea at people in the head from the top of a bus amid a fire raging across their villages, lands and olive groves?

This will be the Gölcük earthquake for Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who is extremely skilled in landing on his feet. It won't happen immediately, of course. What matters now is to put out the fires, to provide the people in need with shelter, to offer them food and heal their wounds. But - as Winston Churchill said after the big air combat called the "Battle of Britain" - this is not the end and perhaps not the beginning of the end, either, but the end of the beginning. No one should doubt it. (ICS/KÖ/SD)