Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara. Photo / AP
Turkey’s president has admitted for the first time that his government was too slow to respond to the massive earthquake that devastated the country’s south east.
Four days since the earthquake struck, Recep Tayyip Erdogan is under mounting pressure amid criticism over the government’s disaster response, with rescuers slow to reach some of the worst-hit areas.
“Despite the fact that we dispatched our team to the area, unfortunately it is true that we were not able to intervene quite as quickly as we would like to,” Erdogan told a briefing in Adiyaman province, where state emergency workers did not arrive until two days after the earthquake.
As Turkey’s death toll reached 19,388 on Friday afternoon, Erdogan pledged to rebuild the area within 12 months in a massive construction drive.
Erdogan, who on Friday visited an improvised tent camp pitched on a football stadium in Kahramanmaras for the residents displaced by the earthquake, accused his opponents of trying to score political points over the tragedy.
“While our nation is groaning underneath the rubble of the earthquake, we will not tolerate looters or opportunists who want to turn this tragedy into a subject for political plundering,” he said.
Several prominent opposition figures including Meral Aksener, leader of the Iyi party, have blamed the slow government response on Erdogan’s tight grip on power, saying the emphasis on top-down decisions made it difficult for volunteers and aid groups to join in the rescue efforts.
Reports continued to pour in on Friday suggesting that shoddy construction and lax adherence to safety standards were partly to blame for the severity of the disaster.
A photo from Kahramanmaras went viral on social media on Friday, showing a city intersection reduced to rubble, with only a single building - the local branch of the Turkish Chamber of Civil Engineers - left standing.
Even its windows appeared to have survived unscathed.
Authorities in several provinces on Friday took action on Thursday’s pledge by the justice minister to go after corrupt officials and construction companies that overlook security standards.
The Prosecutor General’s Office in Diyarbakir on Friday said they would be pursuing charges against those involved in construction and quality control who were suspected of violating building codes.
Prosecutors in Adana, Hatay, Gaziantep, Osmaniye and Sanliurfa made similar statements on Friday.
A worker from the construction company behind a 12-storey block of over 200 flats in Antakya, which collapsed on Monday killing an unknown number of people despite being built less than 10 years ago, was detained at Istanbul airport on Friday afternoon as he was about to fly abroad, local media reported.
Monday’s magnitude 7.8 earthquake and its ensuing aftershocks reduced swathes of south-eastern Turkey and northern Syria to ruins.
Rescue workers in both countries on Friday continued to pull survivors from the ruins as they raced against time to save people who have been trapped under rubble since Monday.
The UN refugee agency estimates as many as 5.3 million people have been left homeless in Syria.
Sivanka Dhanapala, the country representative in Syria for UNHCR, told reporters on Friday that the agency is focusing on providing tents, plastic sheeting, thermal blankets, sleeping mats and winter clothing.
Bashar Assad, the Syrian president, and his wife, Asmaa, visited survivors at the Aleppo University Hospital, according to Syrian state media. It was the leader’s first public appearance in an area affected by the quake.
Syria’s government on Friday approved humanitarian aid delivery across the frontlines of the country’s civil war, state media reported.
More than 3,200 people have died in Syria, with many more injured and hundreds of thousands displaced.
Dozens of planeloads of aid have arrived in areas held by Assad’s government since Monday but little has reached the north west, leading many residents to say they feel left alone.