Turkiye, Despite Frequent Earthquakes, Is Libertarian's Paradise
A potentially deadly paradox in a land of frequent tremors
In addition to the tens of thousands who died in the Turkish-Syrian 7.8 magnitude earthquake in February 2023, millions were left homeless. “Grief gives way to anger over earthquake response,” the Associated Press reported on growing accusations of negligence and incompetence by the government and by building developers. “A furor is building among some survivors over the government’s handling of the crisis,” the NYT reported, speculating that longtime President Recep Tayyip Erdogan could lose popular support. It is “perhaps the greatest threat of his two decades in power to his political future,” asserted NYT Istanbul bureau chief Ben Hubbard.
If Erdogan, 68, wins the next election this spring, one can reasonably conclude he has essentially been anointed president for life, and it’s clearly the end of Turkish democracy.
The 2023 earthquakes are “likely the largest national disaster the country has ever faced, hitting ten major cities in southern Turkey, as well as parts of northern Syria,” declared Jenna Krajeski in The New Yorker. Certainly, perusing the list of historic earthquakes in Turkey, the latest is, at the very least, the worst in nearly a century.
Given this history, what was striking while living in Turkey for two years was the widespread proliferation of high-rise apartment buildings, the lack of regulation and adherence to international building codes. Turkey, I observed back in 2010, was a libertarian paradise. So few standards were imposed or enforced by the government.
“Countries, like Chile and Japan, that are situated in fault zones often have strict engineering standards, but (Erdogan’s A.K. party) has followed a policy of encouraging cheap mass-housing projects, often favoring firms with ties to the party,” Krajeski observed. Videos have emerged of Erdogan boasting about construction amnesties handed out to contractors so they could ignore earthquake safety codes to rapidly build high-rises.
Examples of the high-rise apartments that have sprung up throughout Turkey, eastern and western Europe, as well as the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. This is the complex where my wife, son, and I lived for two years. Inside, it was clean and comfortable, and we had beautiful views of the city of Kayseri and the nearby mountains.
In America, libertarians complain bitterly about too many rules and regulations on the free market, and on business, particularly the building and construction trades, and too much concern by the government for citizens’ health and safety. The national government, they whine, goes so far as to regulate the size and height of toilets. The U.S. Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) should be abolished, they say.
American libertarians should come to Turkey! Many construction workers don’t wear hard hats, welders don’t wear safety masks, disk cutters don’t wear protective goggles; and they don’t seem to clean up construction sites when they finish work. I lived in a new neighborhood in the Kayseri suburb of Talas. Three buildings remained unfinished nearby, and garbage from the construction sites was scattered throughout nearby fields. Tubes of Spackle and bags of leftover cement littered the landscape. It was quite the
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Slender Threads / Global Citizens / Public History to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.