A black swan on the rubble of the earthquake in Turkey

Nothing new.

In Turkey, earthquakes have

.

It happened 20 years ago.

But it is not only the tragedy that persists in repeating itself even in detail, but the premeditated inefficiency of governments to deal with these challenges and especially to prevent them. 

The current disaster, with a mountain of thousands of deaths, is

that suddenly appears among the rubble to revive this possible political scenario and unexpectedly define the fate of the controversial autocracy led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Turkey is a key regional power in global geopolitics, but it suffers from

, close to 62 percent a year.

Argentines who suffer levels well above that number know well what this calamity is about and the anti-system effect it produces.

The enormous earthquake that has shaken the south of that country and the north of Syria, with at least 16,000 dead according to very provisional figures, is a shot below the waterline of an economy with these serious problems.

It happens on the threshold of

 scheduled for May 14 that were already very complicated for Erdogan.

This panorama parallel to the moving information about the tragedy, in an area with little supplies, with a reduced presence of the State and an opaque administration that can explain the absence of anti-seismic systems that would have mitigated the disaster, is now

.

The crisis is exacerbated by the denunciation of an

.

The multitude of criticisms infuriated the regime, which resorted to typical techniques of a country involved in censorship for years, with Internet filters to prevent the dissemination of inconvenient reports and with the president himself warning against the "lies" that are spread against of his government.

There is also a recent law operating, similar to those promoted by Vladimir Putin, the good friend of the Turkish president, which

those who disseminate information that the authorities consider false, that is, information critical of the Turkish authorities.

Only praise is accepted.

But this cataclysm goes beyond any Orwellian strategy.

It affects millions of people over hundreds of kilometers in excess of the enormous number of fatalities.

"The scale of the disaster will completely reset the Turkish economy and politics," Atilla Yesilada, of the Global Source Partners financial firm

, told

One measure of the blow was exposed by the BIT100, the benchmark Turkish stock index, which plunged 8.6% after the disaster and continued to fall in subsequent trading.

The Turkish lira also reached a new low, accentuating the collapse it is experiencing due to the curious policy of the government of

The disaster fuels

in the affected regions, a fact that could favor Erdogan because those wastelands are largely Kurdish, among other oppositions.

Aerial view on February 8, 2023 of rescuers searching for survivors among the rubble of a destroyed building.

Xinhua Photo

Maneuver and state of emergency

The powerful Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), a Kurdish nationalist force, has long been the target of

because it stands in the way of the restoration of the monarchy sought by the president.

Now confronted with this nightmare, the regime has gone a long way and has just declared a

for three months, a period in which it will be possible to govern by decree, bypassing Parliament and, of course, the regional authorities in the hands of the opposition.

Nothing is random.

It is interesting to note that the special powers that the ruler granted himself after the glassy 2016 coup attempt expire in May, 

The earthquake has, however, an unavoidable electoral power that overwhelms any maneuver and this was noted on the ground.

Kieren Barnes, Syria director for

, said the initial period after the quake had been characterized by

. "

Not only in the Arab country.

The

quoted people complaining about the absence of rescue teams, or a significant delay, as they battled a lack of drinking water and electricity

and with survivors ensconced in the rubble of their homes.

Meanwhile, the experts revealed that the low quality of the buildings and

of these constructions contributed to the high levels of destruction.

Kishor Jaiswal, a scientist with the US Geological Survey, estimated that many buildings in the region "were not designed with seismic considerations in mind with the capacity to absorb so much ground motion."

The paradoxes surrounding this disaster are multiple.

Erdogan is a son-in-law of such a calamity,

.

In 1999, an earthquake devastated northwestern Turkey, killing

.

Nothing different from the current nightmare.

File image of Bülent Ecevit, the first Turkish leader who fell after the huge earthquake of 1999 and gave way to the Erdogan administration.

AFP photo

The prime minister at the time, Bülent Ecevit, took three days to visit the destroyed cities and

The natural disaster highlighted steep government corruption coincident with building code violations that mandated earthquake-resistant structures on paper.

More similarities.

That disaster joined the economic crisis of the years 2000 and 2001 and strengthened the population's weariness against the

.

As the journalist Lucas Proto recalls from Ankara in

this disruptive scenario projected the rise of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), founded by Erdogan.

He won in 2002 and

, first as prime minister then as president when the country's parliamentary system came to an end.

There are five terms, not counting his time as mayor of Istanbul when he presented himself as a secular, hard-line leader.

Religion has been a tool to stem the loss of voters to the Turkish half that is perceived as European on the other side of the Bosphorus.

He easily discovered that

of the population, who are usually the most conservative.

Then he came to prohibit kissing in public and emphasize the place in the kitchen of women among other

The main rival

Today the president's main rival is Ekrem Imamoglu, a constitutionalist social democrat and defender of secularism, the current mayor of Istanbul.

This leader with a determined tone, already defeated the ruling party in the 2019 municipal elections, an election where the creeper of power that manages the autocracy

Challenging.

The opposition leader Ekrem Imamoglu, mayor of Istanbul, social democrat and defender of secularism.

AP Photo

But the result of the second attempt was even more favorable to the opposition leader.

A foretaste of the electorate's mood.

That is why the regime invented a series of cases against the leader to

, including trying to send him to jail because he questioned the members of the electoral board who made the surprising decision against his initial victory . .

It is not clear what will happen in May, except that if Erdogan retains power he will surely become radicalized.

But he would follow the path of Ecevit in different dimensions.

Any mutation in that sphere is of key importance because Turkey is a crucial member of NATO and a bridge today with the Kremlin to find a solution to the

.

But, essentially, also because the regime is committed to a restoration of Ottomanism,

It is already happening with the savage war of its Azerbaijani satellite in the South Caucasus against the Armenian enclave of Nagorno Karabagh with its population subjected to a siege of food and water that has been going on for two months these days.

Or, furthermore, disseminating maps with

The Black Swan of the earthquake now hovers over these abuses.

It will be seen how far it rises. 

look too

The earthquake in Turkey as a preview of the electoral fight

Earthquake in Turkey and Syria: desolation in Iskenderun, a city devastated by the earthquake