BAKU, Azerbaijan, March 7. The earthquake which occurred in Türkiye on February 6 this year claimed the lives of more than 46,000 people in ten provinces of the country. This natural disaster was called in Türkiye the tragedy of the century. The Turkish authorities, about six hours later, appealed to the international community for help.
"We have declared the highest level of alert. It provides for international assistance," Turkish Interior Minister Suleiman Soylu said.
Some could've agreed with the fact that, allegedly, if the Turkish authorities took into account the warnings of seismologists, then there would be no such destruction and casualties if the earthquake occurred in one province.
But we're talking ten provinces with a total area of 110,000 square kilometers. The area covered by the elements is larger than the territory of a number of European countries, such as Hungary, Portugal and Austria. The fact that most of the world countries provided assistance to Türkiye during the earthquake is, in fact, the result of Ankara's humanitarian diplomacy.
It would be naive to say that the earthquake didn’t affect the political life of Türkiye. From the first days of the tragedy, almost all members of the alliance of six opposition parties in Türkiye openly accused President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of the dire consequences of the earthquake.
Erdogan's speech in the province of Adiyaman, where he softly apologized to the inhabitants of the province, caused anger (in fact, joy) among the opposition, as the leaders of the opposition alliance took it as weakness and the first sign that Recep Tayyip Erdogan would lose the elections, which will be held on May 14 of this year.
In more than 30 days since the earthquake, the Turkish president hasn’t made a single statement about the opposition. Almost all of his statements were aimed at restoring the provinces affected by the earthquake, which increasingly gave hope to the opposition alliance, which, in fact, didn’t put forward any plans in this direction.
While the president's agenda included the elimination of the consequences of the earthquake, the opposition was already running ahead of time - delegating positions and portfolios of ministers...who aren't ministers and may never will be.
It was expected that, after all that was happening in Türkiye, the opposition alliance would nominate a strong political figure. Well, Kemal Kılıcdaroglu, the leader of the People's Republican Party (CHP), was nominated.
With this, the opposition shot itself in the foot, since personality, influence and scale of Erdogan and Kılıcdaroglu are simply incomparable. Although there are stronger figures in the ranks of the CHP than Kılıcdoroglu, for example, the Mayor of Ankara Mansur Yavas.
Of course, it is too early to talk about how the political situation in Türkiye will develop before the presidential election, but it’s obvious that the opposition represented by candidate Kılıcdaroglu has already been defeated.
Deputy General Director of Trend News Agency