Global Courant 2023-05-12 22:58:31
Antakya, Turkey – Ali Bilgin was left behind in Antakya after devastating earthquakes on February 6 triggered an exodus from the city in southern Turkey.
The human rights lawyer set up tents outside his damaged home in a southern suburb and repaired the damage himself. Some of his guests remain afraid to enter houses, but he was recently able to climb the roof of the detached two-storey house and enjoy the view of the city.
Ahead of Turkey’s May 14 presidential and parliamentary elections, he is training volunteers to work as election observers at polling stations in the Hatay region.
“Our goal is to protect every vote,” says Bilgin, who volunteers at Oy ve Otesi (Vote and Beyond). The civil society group, founded in 2014, will send about 1,000 observers, mostly local residents, to Hatay, and tens of thousands across the country.
“We want to avoid any step that could allow the government or any political party to cast a shadow over the election,” he told Al Jazeera. While civil society observers cannot respond to irregularities, they can alert political party observers at polling stations.
The election, which faces President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s biggest challenge in his two decades in power, comes three months after earthquakes devastated parts of southern Turkey and northwestern Syria. Nearly 51,000 people died in Turkey alone.
Opposition party posters on a street in Hatay amid earthquake devastation (Ylenia Gostoli/Al Jazeera)
‘We’re trying to bring them back’
In Antakya, the extent of the devastation is different from elsewhere. Streets and neighborhoods are littered with crumbling, uninhabited buildings several stories high. Many of the buildings still standing are badly damaged and will have to be demolished.
Antakya is a ghost town and polling will be challenging. One of the biggest concerns is how many of the nearly 1,100,000 registered voters will be able to make it to the polling stations. Many residents left the city for camps or nearby rural areas, while others moved to other regions and had to travel back to vote.
“We have lost many of our citizens. Officially 23,000,” said Luftu Savas, the mayor of Hatay’s metropolitan municipality and member of the main opposition party Cumhuriyet Halk Party (Republican People’s Party, CHP). He told Al Jazeera that according to the municipality’s count, about 475,000 people have left the province, mostly from Antakya.
“Some of them, 10-15 percent, have moved their address to another city and are going to vote there. Most of the people who live in the city center are our (opposition) voters,” he added. “We are trying to get them back, but flight is not an option,” he said, referring to the closure of Hatay airport to incoming flights, officially due to damage to the runway.
Turkey’s Supreme Electoral Council (YSK) said earlier this year that only 133,000 people from the quake region have re-registered to vote elsewhere. According to the United Nations, an estimated three million people are displaced.
“We organize buses from Antalya, Mersin, Konya, but still many of them will not be able to come,” added Savas.
The CHP has set up a logistics coordination office out of containers in the parking lot of a gas station on a highway outside the city.
Party district deputy chief Hakan Karatas said more than 16,000 voters from 75 different cities have applied for assistance to travel back to Hatay during election week.
“The elections could have been postponed, or the city could have been given special status,” Karatas said, echoing a sentiment expressed by many displaced voters across Turkey who believe they should have been able to vote for their local MP in Hatay without facing the logistical challenges of traveling back.
On May 6, the government’s disaster relief agency, AFAD, announced assistance for those wishing to travel back to the earthquake zone to vote.
An earthquake-damaged building is demolished in Antakya (Ylenia Gostoli/Al Jazeera)
Only back to vote
While loud demonstrations are taking place across the country, there are no large gatherings and no songs blaring from buses in the earthquake zone, where campaigning is limited to meetings with civilians, officials said.
Much of the region has traditionally been a stronghold of the incumbent president – and there is little evidence that the quake has significantly eroded that support. However, Hatay is considered a competitive region, where Erdogan’s Adalet ve Kalkınma Party (Justice and Development, AK Party) currently has five seats, followed by the CHP with four seats.
Erdogan has promised to rebuild millions of homes within a year. The opposition has said it wants to reverse the president’s unorthodox economic policies, largely attributed to the Turkish lira’s freefall against the dollar and runaway inflation. It also pledged to abolish the presidential system introduced after a referendum in 2017 and return Turkey to a parliamentary democracy.
In the old part of Antakya, site of the ancient city of Antioch, Roman-era cobbled streets and Ottoman mosques are largely in ruins. The iconic Saray Street is a mess that has barely moved since the earthquakes hit.
Some shops in the old bazaar have reopened. Umut, 28, was in a phone repair shop his friend had recently set up. He returned from Ankara a week before the elections.
“I think we need change,” he said, adding that he couldn’t bring himself to be optimistic.
“Look,” he added, pointing to the rubble that bulldozers are still moving. He planned to leave after the election.
“I think I’ll go to Eskisehir (a city in northwestern Turkey) for one or two years,” he said, “I’ll do anything, any job. When I feel better psychologically, I will come back.”
While half of Turkey’s citizens look to the days ahead with hope of a turning point in their country’s history, the citizens of Antakya look at their devastated city and wonder how long it will take to rebuild it.
“Our house is badly damaged and will have to be demolished,” said Hakan Cam, a 41-year-old security guard who lives in a tent with his wife Ayfer, their 10-year-old son and mother-in-law Zahife. campsite on the outskirts of the city.
“Thank God, we’re still alive,” Zahife said. “But we have nothing, there is nothing left.”
Although the camp looks relatively clean and organized, hygiene remains an issue as there are over 200 tents here.
“On Sunday I will take Ayfer to the polling station,” said Cam, who, unlike his wife, has voted for the governing party in the past. “I will be there. But this year I will not vote.”
