Last July l posted this piece about Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan:
Since then, while Turkey’s economy had been in decline, not much of significance was different. Erdogan remained the same chameleon-like leader I earlier described – neither at home nor abroad was he changing his now autocratic ways. He had been, after all, leader of Turkey for two decades. So why should he mess with what long had been an inconsistent but nevertheless proven formula for political success – notwithstanding an uncertain presidential election upcoming in May?
Then things changed. Not everything changed. Not the leader, Erdogan. Not his followers, much if not most of the Turkish electorate. It was the context that changed. The context within which the leader and his followers were situated changed in an instant – from being one thing to being something else entirely. To being a nation stricken. There can be no more vivid example of the importance of context than Turkey now. Turkey’s political climate and economic prospects are entirely different six days after the earthquake – in which some 25,000 Turks died and another tens of thousands were injured – than they were before tragedy struck.*
Erdogan was likely to win reelection in May, though it was not certain. After all his years in power, whatever was once his halo had long ago faded and his political enemies were purportedly intent on joining forces finally to defeat him. But Erdogan is a tough, seasoned autocrat – he would have been hard to unseat.
Now, though, anger against Erdogan for what seems his dereliction of duty continues to mount – anger that by May will be difficult though not impossible to mute. There are three charges against him. First, that in the quake’s immediate aftermath help was slow to come and woefully inadequate. Second, that for many years preparations for another seismic event – which, given Turkey’s multiple quake hot spots, had long been predicted – were poor to nonexistent. And third, related to the second, was corruption. That much of the money allocated to quake mitigation went not into enforcing and re-enforcing Turkey’s building codes and infrastructure, but into lining the pockets of corrupt officials.
Autocratic leaders hog credit when things go right. But their level of control is not total. So, when things go wrong, especially when they go horribly wrong, they cannot escape all blame.
But Erdogan is nothing if not wily – and he has friends or at least allies in high places, in the East and in the West. Moreover, the presidential elections are not now. They are in May – or, at least, they were originally scheduled to be held in May. Who knows what will happen between now and then? Which is why, notwithstanding Turkey’s mood of the moment – full of anger, replete with grief – Erdogan’s political opponents still have their work cut out for them.
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*The earthquake also struck areas of Syria. Those in affected areas are suffering especially cruelly, given the malevolent dispositions of their leader, Bashar al-Assad.