numbers of terror
Today will be marked by corrections.
From steadily increasing figures of horror
: more dead in Turkey and in Syria, more collapsed houses, more destroyed roads and infrastructure.
The extent of the earthquake catastrophe can only be guessed at so far.
Since yesterday, the number of victims has been steadily revised upwards - now to
more than 4,200 dead and 15,000 injured
.
It is horrifying enough to imagine that countless people are still waiting for help under the collapsed buildings.
Added to this are the wintry sub-zero temperatures, with which the survivors and injured now have to find shelter.
Ahmet Başar Şen is Turkey's ambassador to Germany
, he studied German in Stuttgart, speaks fluent German and has already completed several posts in our country during his diplomatic career.
Since the first reports about the catastrophe, the Turkish embassy and consulate general have been "in a state of emergency," says Şen.
"We are grateful for the immense wave of solidarity from the Germans in view of the great loss of life and the devastation in our country."
Not only do many families of Turkish origin come from affected places such as Malatya, Maras or Antep.
With Alanya, it also hit a vacation spot that is very popular with Germans.
Emergency medical teams are urgently needed
for the rescue and recovery work
, the ambassador says, as well as emergency medical equipment and search and rescue teams with search dogs who can work in difficult conditions.
One does not want to imagine
how much more dramatic the situation in the earthquake zone in north-eastern Syria is
.
Here the people and the infrastructure are already badly marked by years of civil war.
How quickly can they be helped now?
Wasn't it about the lousy German winter weather yesterday?
Some news put the stable German conditions in the right light.
Criticism from experts: Was the Turkish state not prepared?
Devastating Earthquake: How Geologists Explain the Disaster
At a glance: The latest developments in the affected areas
No connection under this AfD number
Not only the 300 invited guests came to the tenth birthday party of the AfD in Königstein, Hesse,
but a further 800 people, the latter, however, as counter-demonstrators
.
But the protests are likely to have strengthened the party mood in the »House of Encounters«.
The AfD has always defined itself in its demarcation from the outside world, in the
comforting feeling of forming a stronghold against overpowering opponents
, and as the only political movement to reflect the true mood of the people.
At least the latter feeling has just been exposed as an illusion:
unlike the AfD, it is apparently much less anchored in the people than all other parties.
The Institute of German Economics has evaluated how many contact points the party operates for citizens, i.e. how many constituency, parliamentarian and party offices.
The result: With only 144 offices, the AfD is
"by far the bottom of the table"
compared to all other parties .
Large parties like the CDU or SPD certainly had more time and financial means to set up their structures.
But even
in comparison with the left
, the AfD looks old, or rather small, according to the IW paper: »Both nationwide and in East Germany, where both parties are particularly present, the AfD has 3.8 times each Fewer contact points – and that with more than twice as many seats in the Bundestag and five times as many direct mandates.«
Even in the digital world, the AfD
rarely engages in direct discourse with its huge following
, observed Knut Bergmann's team of IW authors: The short message service Twitter is used "almost exclusively as a top-down communication channel".
And "even to direct inquiries from the public, their parliamentarians react less frequently than the parliamentarians of other parties."
AfD celebrates its tenth anniversary: white laundry in the spin cycle
How do Germans view the war?
Today in Berlin a
picture of the mood of the Germans after a year of war in the Ukraine
will be presented.
The Allensbach Institute for Public Opinion conducted the survey on behalf of the Center for Strategy and Higher Management.
The survey was conducted between January 5 and 18, 2023, before the German government made a decision on the delivery of Leopard main battle tanks to Ukraine.
A survey afterwards showed that the majority of Germans supported this step.
Nevertheless, since the beginning of the war, public opinion on arms deliveries has always been divided into two major camps -
one could perhaps call them "Team Caution" and "Team Commitment".
It will therefore be interesting to see what results the more fundamental survey by the Allensbach team led by Renate Köcher will bring to light.
The political divide even runs through the federal government, as a report by my colleagues from our capital office shows:
Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock are struggling to find the right foreign policy course for the government
, and not just with regard to arms deliveries, but also in relation to each other
on China or in writing a national security strategy.
The Green Minister
does not want to accept the servant role
that many of her predecessors found themselves in.
"With the two Potsdamers by choice, two opposite types meet," analyze my colleagues on Scholz and Baerbock, "two different methods of doing politics.
Pathos versus pragmatism, big gestures versus small steps
.« Who do you think will go down better with the Germans?
The popularity values alone should not be decisive for this.
Olaf Scholz vs. Annalena Baerbock: cook
You can find more news and background information on the war in Ukraine here:
Latest developments:
The Ukrainian President is reorganizing his troops - and could soon travel to Brussels.
The battle for Bakhmut continues.
And: Millions of books removed from libraries.
The overview.
"They shoot with everything they have":
Russian troops are said to have almost encircled Bakhmut after months of fighting.
How much longer can Ukrainians hold onto the iconic city?
Impressions from the Donbass by SPIEGEL reporter Christoph Reuter.
According to the Wagner boss, he was involved in the bombing of Bachmut:
Russian and Ukrainian soldiers are fighting for every street in Bachmut.
The head of the Wagner mercenary group now appears in a fighter plane after an attack on the Ukrainian city – with a message to the Ukrainian president.
Moscow sells gold to cover budget gaps:
The Russian economy is suffering, and there is a huge hole in the budget.
According to the Kremlin, it now had to draw on its reserves.
However, these have not yet been exhausted.
Here is the current quiz of the day
The starting question today: The political talk show "Anne Will" will be discontinued at the end of 2023.
When was the first edition?
Winner of the day...
… is Stephan Bröchler
, state returning officer in Berlin.
Today
the man with what is currently the toughest job in the capital
wants to inform the press about the status of preparations for the re-election this weekend.
As insiders of the Berlin Senate Department for the Interior report,
media from all over the world have registered
.
Bröchler wants to describe the many security precautions with which the messed-up election of 2021 should work the second time around:
42,000 election
workers would be used, they say, 7,000 more than the first time.
40 percent more ballot papers
than actually needed are ready, so that supplies don't have to be frantically found again.
And to be on the safe side, four minutes
are allowed for individual voting in the polling booth
.
Is all this enough to prevent another chaos?
Bröchler, who in normal life is an administrative scientist at the Berlin University of Economics and Law, was born in Düsseldorf, which should help him with his honorary post.
Of course, Cologne would have been even better, but
a cheerful Rhenish person
should be able to deal with the situation in Berlin more easily than other minds.
Berlin State Returning Officer: “I am preparing for a full re-election in mid-February”
The latest news from the night
China apologizes for balloon over Costa Rica:
Beijing has admitted that the balloon over Latin America also comes from the People's Republic.
Meanwhile, the United States is publishing details of the recently shot down flying object – such as its size and weight.
Economics Minister Habeck expects concessions from the USA:
The Biden government wants to give preference to companies that produce in North America.
This is supposed to hit China – but it also alarms Europe.
Robert Habeck still believes in a compromise with Washington.
Five Argentinian rugby players sentenced to life in prison for killing 18-year-old boy:
They ambushed Fernando Báez Sosa outside a disco in a seaside resort in Argentina and beat him to death.
Now the verdict for eight players of a rugby team has been announced - one of the perpetrators fainted.
The SPIEGEL + recommendations for today
The Chinese are coming – good thing!
Their country was sealed off for three years.
Now people are traveling again.
We should welcome them – and go back to China ourselves.
What makes Europe stronger:
The EU wants to enter the subsidy race with the USA and weaken its internal market.
That's the wrong recipe.
For many just an administrative act, for some the end of a world:
Every five minutes someone leaves the church in Munich.
The reasons are not documented, but the registrars know: Not only abuse scandals and financial hardships move people to the step.
Why we need more dogs in the office:
Years ago there were hardly any companies that allowed dogs in the office - today researchers even recommend it.
But what does it really mean when the dog is in the conference?
I wish you a good start into the day.
Yours Melanie Amann, member of the editor-in-chief
