Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan admitted to “shortcomings” in his country’s response to the world’s deadliest earthquake in more than a decade, which has killed over 15,000 people in Turkey and Syria.
Erdogan, who contests an election in May, said on a visit to the disaster zone on Wednesday that operations were now working normally and promised no one would be left homeless.
“Of course, there are shortcomings. The conditions are clear to see. It’s not possible to be ready for a disaster like this,” Erdogan said in his most direct response yet to accusations that his government failed to supply a sufficient number of rescuers and aid.
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Across a swathe of southern Turkey, people sought temporary shelter and food in freezing winter weather, and waited in anguish by piles of rubble where family and friends might still lie buried.
Rescuers were still finding some people alive. But many Turks have complained of a lack of equipment, expertise and support to rescue those trapped – sometimes even as they could hear cries for help.
“Where is the state? Where have they been for two days? We are begging them. Let us do it, we can get them out,” Sabiha Alinak said near a snow-covered collapsed building in the city of Malatya where her young relatives were trapped.
There were similar scenes and complaints in neighbouring Syria, whose north was hard hit by Monday’s huge quake.
Syria’s ambassador to the United Nations admitted the government had a “lack of capabilities and lack of equipment,” blaming more than a decade of civil war in his country and Western sanctions.
Dozens of nations, including the United States, China and the Gulf States have pledged to help, and search teams as well as relief supplies have already arrived.
The death toll from both countries was expected to rise as hundreds of collapsed buildings in many cities have become tombs for people who had been asleep when the quake hit.
In the Turkish city of Antakya, dozens of bodies, some covered in blankets and sheets and others in body bags, were lined up on the ground outside a hospital.
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Melek, 64, bemoaned the lack of rescue teams. “We survived the earthquake, but we will die here due to hunger or cold.”
Many in the disaster zone had slept in their cars or in the streets under blankets in freezing cold, fearful of going back into buildings shaken by the 7.8-magnitude earthquake – Turkey’s deadliest since 1999 – and by a second powerful quake hours later.
The death toll in Turkey has climbed to 12,391, state news agency Anadolu reported, citing Turkish disaster authority AFAD. Across the border in war-ravaged Syria, the death toll stood at 2,662.
Turkish authorities released video of rescued survivors, including a young girl in pyjamas, and an older man covered in dust, an unlit cigarette between his fingers as he was pulled from the debris.
Turkish officials say some 13.5 million people were affected in an area spanning roughly 450km from Adana in the west to Diyarbakir in the east. In Syria, people were killed as far south as Hama, 250km from the epicentre.
Some who died in Turkey were refugees from Syria’s war. Their body bags arrived at the border in taxis, vans and piled atop flatbed trucks to be taken to final resting places in their homeland.
More than 298,000 people have been made homeless and 180 shelters for the displaced had been opened, Syrian state media reported, apparently referring to areas under government control, and not held by opposition factions.
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In Syria, relief efforts are complicated by a conflict that has partitioned the nation and wrecked its infrastructure.
The delivery of UN humanitarian aid via Turkey to millions of people in northwest Syria could resume on Thursday after the long-running operation was halted by the quake, UN officials said.
In the Syrian city of Aleppo, staff at the Al-Razi hospital attended to an injured man who said more than a dozen relatives including his mother and father were killed when the building they were in collapsed.
Erdogan, who declared a state of emergency in 10 provinces and sent troops to help, arrived in Kahramanmaras to view the damage and see the rescue and relief effort.
Speaking to reporters, a wail of ambulance sirens in the background, he said there had been problems with roads and airports but “we are better today”.
“We will be better tomorrow and later. We still have some issues with fuel … but we will overcome those too,” Erdogan said.
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He later condemned criticism of the government’s response. “This is a time for unity, solidarity. In a period like this, I cannot stomach people conducting negative campaigns for political interest,” Erdogan told reporters in the southern province of Hatay.
Nevertheless, the disaster will pose a challenge to Erdogan in the May election that was already set to be the toughest fight of his two decades in power. Istanbul’s stock exchange operator suspended trading for five days in an unprecedented step.
Any perception that the government is failing to address the disaster properly could hurt his prospects. Conversely, analysts say he could rally national support around the crisis response and strengthen his position.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad appears to be seeking political advantage from the quake, pressing for foreign aid to be delivered through his territory as he aims to chip away at his international isolation, analysts said.
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Twitter was restricted in Turkey on Wednesday just as the public had come to “rely on the service” in the aftermath of the disaster, the Netblocks internet observatory said.
Twitter Chief Executive Elon Musk later said in a tweet that the company had been informed by the government of Turkey that full access to the social media platform would be re-enabled “shortly”.
Cyber rights expert and professor at Istanbul Bilgi University Yaman Akdeniz said it was not clear what caused the restriction, adding that access to TikTok was also limited in Turkey.
“How come Twitter is restricted on a day communication saves lives?” the head of the DEVA opposition party, Ali Babacan, said on Twitter.
The Transportation and Infrastructure Ministry, which could impose such restrictions, was not available for comment.
The last time an earthquake killed so many people was 2015, when 8,800 died in a 7.8 magnitude quake in Nepal. A 2011 earthquake in Japan triggered a tsunami, killing nearly 20,000 people.
