Kurdish sources denounce that the Erdogan government hides the existence of more than 150,000 deaths from the earthquake
By Musa Ardem
While Erdogan continues to speak of a few thousand deaths, Kurdish sources indicate that the president and his officials are lying, in order to hide the true figures of the catastrophe. Tens of thousands of people lost their lives and hundreds of thousands were injured in the earthquakes that struck Kurdistan and Turkey at 8-hour intervals. The epicenters of the earthquakes were in Pazarcik (magnitude 7.8) and Elbistan (magnitude 7.7), in the province of Maraş.
The victims of the earthquake have been denouncing that the Turkish state institutions do not provide support or assistance. So much so that some people lost their lives from hypothermia (decreased body temperature) due to the inadequacies of the Turkish state. According to official statements, there is a terrible inconsistency in the numbers of buildings destroyed and the number of deaths and injuries. And this inconsistency leads us to ask ourselves a question: "Is the balance of those who lost their lives hidden?"
According to information obtained by an anonymous AKP (government party) source, the number of people who lost their lives in the earthquake is much higher than official statements. According to the information provided by the AKP official, the death toll exceeds 150,000. The same source has stated that the Turkish Interior Minister, Süleyman Soylu, has called the provincial and district governorates of the earthquake zone and has given instructions for the rubble to be removed as soon as possible.
When the civil
authorities said: "There are still people under the rubble. How do we
remove it without removing the people?" Soylu allegedly insisted on the
instruction to load the debris onto trucks and transport it from the earthquake
zones. However, it was claimed that some of the civil authorities took the work
in stride because there could be deaths or injuries in the rubble. (Firat News,February 11)
Erdogan and his government are facing a critical situation, since the debacle of the economy, which has been hitting the pockets of the working class and the people for several years, has been compounded by the earthquake, the consequences of which are directly related with government policy. It is that the ruling party promoted the growth of a large real estate bubble, which inflated on the basis of the construction of buildings that did not have the anti-seismic requirements that are needed in a region where these earthquakes usually occur.
These
constructions, which gave great profits to the employers who put them up,
collapsed, leaving thousands and thousands of dead and people left without
their homes. The anger, which is growing for this reason and for the State's
lack of attention to the victims of the catastrophe, must become a rebellion, a
great struggle that kicks out the government and imposes a fundamental
solution, a workers' government and the people who, unlike bourgeois
governments, work to raise the standard of living of the majority.