Daron Acemoglu and Cihat Tokgoz,
BOSTON – The devastating earthquakes that killed more than 50,000 people in Turkey in February (and at least 7,000 in northern Syria) have exposed deep-seated problems ahead of potentially groundbreaking presidential and parliamentary elections on May 14.
It is now clear that Turkey needs more than a change of government; it needs a fundamental transformation of its politics and economy.
That means confronting the hugely powerful construction lobby and trying to rebuild the country’s shaky democracy.
Although the earthquakes were natural disasters, the devastation they caused was a result of corruption within the construction industry and beyond.
But this didn’t stop Turkey’s hardy president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan from blaming nature for the massive death toll, even though he admitted authorities were caught off guard.
The Turkish people have been asked to believe that everything is now under control and that Erdoğan should be trusted with post-disaster reconstruction.
Still, it is worth recalling that when Turkey was hit by a major earthquake (7.6 on the Richter scale) in 1999 near the city of İzmit, the large death toll at the time (around 18,000) was rightly attributed to shoddy construction and poor urban planning.
The government responded by adopting state-of-the-art building codes and regulations to prevent new construction in the most at-risk areas.
So why then did the latest earthquakes destroy more than 18,000 buildings and cause another 280,000 fatal damage? The short answer is that building codes were not followed.
Many of the recently decimated buildings were built after 1999, but they were still unsafe (with weak foundations that did not use the minimum amount of cement required) because city councils and inspectors had licensed developers.
Corruption is just one facet of the wider rise of the Turkish construction lobby over the past two decades. The construction sector now accounts for more than 40% of total fixed investment and its political influence is even greater than these figures suggest.
Construction companies are among the major donors to all major political parties and maintain inappropriately close ties with all municipal governments, regardless of which party is in control.
While corruption in the construction sector is also a major problem in many other countries, it is particularly damaging in Turkey.
Not only is the industry disproportionately large in relation to the economy, but it also taps into democratic institutions that have been severely weakened after two decades of Erdoğan’s autocratic rule.
The Erdoğan government’s bizarre 2018 “construction amnesty” illustrates the power of the construction lobby. The amnesty allowed owners to avoid demolishing or modifying non-compliant buildings simply by paying an additional tax, even in the case of structures erected along fault lines, wetlands, basins and other high-risk areas.
In the ten provinces worst affected by the recent earthquakes, as many as 294,000 buildings have been amnestied.
While there is currently no definitive data to judge amnesty lethality, it is safe to assume that many of these buildings were among those that collapsed and killed their inhabitants.
Turkey’s 1999 “earthquake tax”, which was increased by presidential decree in 2021, was intended to fund improvements to make buildings more resistant to seismic events. But there is great uncertainty about where these funds have gone.
With such a staggering death toll and hundreds of thousands homeless, you might expect Turkish voters to protest the government en masse on May 14. But so far there is at least little evidence that the media and civil society are eager to hold national and municipal politicians accountable.
Unlike in 1999 when most media outlets described the damage from the earthquake as a governance failure, today the almost complete consensus in the Turkish media is that it was an “act of God”, implying that Erdoğan and his government are innocent .
This kind of coverage comes as no surprise given that Erdoğan has gradually gained near-direct control over all national media outlets, including TV channels and high-circulation newspapers.
Open dissent has become increasingly dangerous: journalists are routinely jailed for critical reporting, and websites and social media platforms have been shut down for challenging Erdoğan.
Increasing repression in February had unintended consequences. Four months earlier, in October 2022, parliament passed a “censorship law” that significantly deepened online censorship.
Using the new law, the government blocked access to social media sites in the immediate aftermath of the quakes, inadvertently complicating rescue efforts.
This astonishing level of media scrutiny – and the polarization it has generated – means opposition parties and politicians struggle to get their message across to voters, especially when they draw attention to endemic corruption and government incompetence.
But even if a coalition of opposition parties can win, replacing the government will not solve Turkey’s problems. The country’s institutions need to be rebuilt, and that process cannot be completed unless the building lobby is curtailed.
While the chances of achieving transformational change seem slim, Erdoğan’s control over the media and state institutions does not guarantee his re-election.
There is a palpable desire for change among voters, even if it is not reflected in the media. One place to find it is in football stadiums.
At recent games for two of the country’s most-watched teams, thousands of fans chanted, “Lies, cheating, it’s been 20 years, resign.”
Naturally, this story was downplayed by the Turkish media, and pro-Erdoğan officials and journalists have tried to label dissent as terrorism.
The clubs themselves have been fined and many of their fans are banned from attending away matches. Nevertheless, these views will not go away and could very well find resonance at the ballot box.
Demands for political change can come from unexpected quarters, and when they do, they can bring hope to millions of others. That, more than a new government, is what requires real change.
To rebuild Turkish democracy, Turks will have to remove Erdoğan, confront the construction lobby, and then get to work restoring essential institutions – perhaps starting with the news media.
Daron Acemoglu, professor of economics at MIT, is a co-author (with Simon Johnson) of the forthcoming Strength and Progress: Our Millennial Struggle for Technology and Prosperity (PublicAffairs, May 2023). Cihat Tokgöz, a former senior investment banker at global financial institutions, is an author and analyst on the Turkish economy and financial markets.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2023.www.project-syndicate.org
