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transcription
This transcript was created with speech popularity software. Although it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the audio of the episode before quoting this transcript and email transcripts@nytimes. com if you have any questions.
From the New York Times, I’m Sabrina Tavernise, and this is “The Daily. “
[MUSIC IN PROGRESS]
The scale of the death in the Turkey-Syria earthquake now raises questions about who is to blame. In Turkey, the government has directly blamed developers and asset developers, accusing them of opting for profit over security. But the truth is much more complicated. Today, my colleague Ben Hubbard explains why much of the duty would possibly fall on the Turkish government itself.
[MUSIC IN PROGRESS]
It’s Tuesday, February 28.
So, Ben, we now have more than 50,000 dead in the earthquake in Turkey and Syria. And for weeks, the question we’ve all been asking is, how is it possible that so many other people have died?investigated this factor in Turkey, where loss of life was by far the greatest. Tell us what you have learned so far.
The first thing we have to recognize is that it was a very hard earthquake and it hit a very, very giant territory. So that’s where we started. And when I got to the earthquake zone, after it happened, one of the first things that struck me was that not everything flipped.
You have this confusing mosaic of safe spaces where buildings, at least from the outside, look more or less beautiful, and then suddenly you find one that’s absolutely flat. There was a specific site where we wentwhere a painting team was painting, looking to rescue other people who were trapped in the rubble, and it just so happened that there was an organization of volunteer-based staff in a position to help. They were there with their helmets and equipment. And they were examining the site. And they were commenting on the poor quality that the rebar that was there seemed to have, the cement seemed a little weak. his hands.
And everyone was smacking their tongues and asking, what happened here?What was wrong with those buildings that collapsed?So, this query about those buildings turns into anger.
[MUSIC IN PROGRESS]
Almost a week after the earthquakes, the blame begins.
And he responds, and he responds by suing the builders.
The Turkish government has issued arrest warrants for more than a hundred people.
They come with contractors, architects and engineers.
— accused of botched and construction.
They start by arresting structural contractors, other people who were connected to some of those buildings, and then it speeds up.
Two asset developers were reportedly arrested at airports, accused of fleeing the country.
We saw other people who were perpetrated on national television, with their wives, enter the police car.
So far, another 188 people have been arrested, however, more than six hundred people are now known as possible suspects in connection with those allegations of negligence in construction. And there. . .
[MUSIC IN PROGRESS]
So, the government is focusing on the people in the structure, saying that they are the problem. They are the ones who built those buildings that were not strong enough.
IT IS OK. So the government cracks down on those it says are to blame. In other words, the builders.
But it turns out it’s much, much more confusing than that. I mean, we, myself and my colleagues here in Istanbul, started with this, investigating who those other people were, how the industry worked, and just looking to perceive how what buildings were built and what the disorders were. Why did some buildings collapse and others didn’t?
And we’re still in the early stages of the process. It is even difficult to identify some of those buildings and find out who was to blame for them, who built them. But what we discovered is that the story begins in 1999. That’s when it had the last major earthquake in Turkey.
Desperate rescue efforts were underway in western Turkey after a major earthquake struck overnight.
This is a very strong earthquake that hits the city of Izmit, not Istanbul.
Some buildings staggered and survived, while others collapsed. According to residents, it would possibly have fallen because the two most sensitive floors were built in cans without official permission.
[MUSIC IN PROGRESS]
There is massive, massive damage to the city, collapsed buildings and other people buried, and it is a horrible situation. It kills more than 17,000 people. And the government is savagely punished for its response.
It’s a do-it-yourself rescue, and it’s chaos.
There is only this feeling that they did not have the ability to react in time, to get rescuers, to prepare the survivors.
But as the surprise fades, people’s anger begins to manifest.
A few years later, we have this massive economic crisis that’s hitting people’s wallets. And all of this together, this feeling that the country is so vulnerable to this terrible herbal disaster, plus all the economic pain of this crisis, only creates this massive anger. opposed to the government that was in office at the time.
[APPLAUSE]
And this new Justice and Development Party is riding this wave of anger.
[SPEAKING TURK]:
What you are telling me with this welcome, with this interest, is that Turkey will revel in a primary replenishment after the November elections.
They campaigned on this concept that they were going to be more competent, less corrupt and more transparent than the previous guys. I mean, the fundamental concept was that the previous games had ruined everything and we’re going to go in and we’re going to do a lot more work.
The Justice and Development Party won a landslide victory in Sunday’s national elections.
And then enough electorate brought them to parliament, and they ended up with the ability, in 2003, to appoint the prime minister. And they chose, at the time, this promising politician through the call of Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
So, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has been running the country for 20 years, is coming to force in many tactics as a result of this failed political backlash of the previous government.
This certainly contributes to his rise. And then, in the next few years, the country takes off.
[MUSIC IN PROGRESS]
Green fields on the outskirts of Istanbul, fields that will soon become a site of massive structure.
There’s wonderful economic growth, and a lot of that is, really, this concept of build, build, build.
The skyline adjusts as the city grows upwards and outwards.
Everything goes higher, faster and further. When the new buildings upgrade to the old ones, another economic elegance will settle here.
There are giant portions of society that are emerging in the middle class.
There will be luxury homes designed to appeal to Turkey’s emerging classes.
This concept that you, as a Turkish family, can have your own component in a beautiful city, becomes a reality for a large part of the population that was previously poor.
New grocery malls open almost every month.
And there is only one structure falling at this point.
And there is a lot of land to develop.
Thus, Erdogan’s solution after the earthquake and economic crisis of 1999 is to invest in structure and progression to revive the Turkish economy.
But the dark aspect of this whole structure is that Turkey has very, very active faults in giant portions of the country. This is a land that has stories of earthquakes going back to recorded history and actually each and every explanation of why there will be hard earthquakes in the long term.
So one of the things the government is doing is trying to reform the way buildings are built, get better building codes, get better curtain criteria to verify that new construction that is built can cope with earthquakes.
Because they don’t need buildings to collapse like they did in 1999.
Oui. Et then, they’ve done things like upgrade the engineering calculations you have to do to the amount of design you want to help a construction of a certain size. There have been studies on criteria for the type of fabrics you use, whether it’s concrete, iron, rebar or that sort of thing, and updating them as generation develops. And this procedure has been going on for a long time.
But where is Turkey right now, everyone we talked to essentially said the codes were world-class. Theoretically, those codes are some of the most productive you can find for creating earthquake-resistant buildings. But when we started looking at this in the last few weeks, what’s become transparent is that, in many cases, they’re just not being tracked.
Then, the Turkish government realizes that all these structures carry a risk. They update their building codes. But why don’t other people adhere to them?
It’s partly because, in the midst of this structural boom, this Wild West environment is emerging, so you ended up having massive disorders in the inspection regime. Ideally, to make sure standards are met, you’re going to have smart, independent inspectors stop at sites, locate where things are being done right, or where substandard fabrics are being used. And in many cases, that just didn’t happen.
There is a practice where structured corporations can simply rent personal inspection corporations to go to their sites and conduct inspections.
Private inspection companies? Is that the government’s job?
Of course, that’s the government’s job, but they were able to rent those personal corporations. And personal inspection corporations need to keep operating, and if they have a reputation for shutting down people’s projects, they may no longer be rented, so they have an incentive to approve projects that maybe they don’t.
Wow, that’s a general clash of interests, right? That’s crazy.
Well, it’s even worse than that. Because in some cases, according to many industry professionals we spoke to, structure corporations would set up their own inspection corporations and thus rent out to inspect their own projects.
[MUSIC IN PROGRESS]
So the government has absolutely abdicated the duty of this vital function.
I would say that there were significant deficiencies in the audits put in place to make sure those codes were met, and the result was that some buildings built were not as strong as before.
[MUSIC IN PROGRESS]
‘Ll.
So, Ben, you just told us that Turkey’s anti-seismic codes were world class, but they weren’t enforced. So, Erdogan agrees with all this?
Ouais. Je, one might think because of his history that, of all the politicians in Turkey, he would be incredibly fussy about the enormous force that earthquakes have on politics, but there haven’t been many symptoms of that. And in fact, his government has been quite arrogant about it.
I mean, over the years they’ve grown through those things that are known as amnesty construction.
[MUSIC IN PROGRESS]
What are they?
So, there are many buildings in Turkey that don’t comply with the code and over time, the government becomes aware of that. Or the inspectors find that someone has fenced off their balcony without permission, someone has added some motives for their building, perhaps to earn some extra rent money, someone has to sell the land to a company, which is cutting pillars to get more space, and this is reported to the government because the inspectors discovered it or because neighbors have filed a lawsuit.
So you have those cases of code violations that just pile up and accumulate, and every once in a while, the government issues an amnesty, where it wipes the slate clean. The way it works is that if you’ve been reported for doing something to your construction that violates the code, you pay a fine. And in many cases, other people don’t even want to fix the cause of the code violation, even if it’s something like cutting down the earthen pillars of a construction, which can make it more vulnerable than an earthquake.
So, basically, the government renounces all those violations even though they can lead to harmful situations.
Okay.
So in addition to the fact that the building inspection formula is quite irregular, even when inspections reveal something and locate building code violations, the government simply forgives them. But why?
Well, there are several explanations why. First, the government makes money from it. I mean, whoever has violations of the code that they need to forgive, pays a fine. In the last amnesty, it ended up generating more than $4 billion for the government. So there’s an explanation for why the government likes it.
And the electorate appreciates it very much. People invest cash in real estate. If you are a circle of working Turkish relatives and you have taken your savings and bought an apartment from a circle of relatives or a house from a circle of relatives, the last thing you need is for the government to come and locate a violation of the code and condemn the construction or demolish it, because you will lose your investment. So other people like those things, and that’s why they tend to conduct elections.
The recent high was set in motion in the 2018 presidential election. And next year, Erdogan will follow the path of the crusade in the local elections and essentially brags about it to the people, saying, look how wonderful we’ve done: in this city, we’ve forgiven x number of code violations, and we provide this as this wonderful service that we’ve given to the people. And finally, this new amnesty circular ended up forgiving code violations in more than 7 million sets across the country.
What looks like a bunch of units. How does this figure be?
Ouais. Je means it’s a country of about 80 million people, so yes, 7 million games is a lot of games.
But weren’t other people worried about protecting their homes?
I mean, there were definitely other people who were worried. There is a total organization of seismologists in Turkey that sounded the alarm and made it very clear that, according to all science, it is only a matter of time before stronger earthquakes occur. I think many of them feel that no one is listening to them.
You have inspectors. You have engineers and other people reporting things, I mean. We interviewed a couple, two lawyers, who had filed 51 lawsuits against this builder in their city because they thought he violated the code everywhere. out for that. But there’s something that, I think, is human nature in thinking about something like an earthquake, that nobody knows when it’s going to happen. It can happen tomorrow. That may happen next week. It can happen a hundred years from now.
I think it’s hard, before the earthquake hits, for other people to figure out what it will look like and what it will mean for their lives, and it allows other people to settle for that magical thinking of, like, maybe we’re just going to dodge the ball.
Like, it’s a remote danger, not quick, so I’m going to think about that another day. I’m not going to think about that today.
I mean, it’s reminiscent of climate substitution in the sense that it’s this danger that other people know is coming in the future. But even if you’re convinced it’s there, it’s still remote in your life. And in Meanwhile, you have other things to worry about that seem much more urgent to you and therefore I think it’s part of human nature to focus on the things that are right in front of you.
But it’s up to the government to force other people to do the right thing collectively. But in this case, the Turkish government did not. It made things worse, which brings me back to Erdogan. He stopped those builders, but what about him?Will he and his group have to pay the price?
Well, the big check is going to be the election. Parliamentary and presidential elections are scheduled for May, and they are for him. In other words, he would like to remain in power. He has struggled in the polls this year, largely because of his country’s economic difficulties.
Many voters were quite angry about the way he was running the country even before the earthquake struck. And then there’s this massive herbal crisis that killed all those other people, and it’s hard to see how that benefits you in this election. And so he was, almost every day, he was in the earthquake zone with a very serious look on his face, dressed in this long black coat, meeting with other people living in tent cities, gathering those who suffered the earthquake and seeing the rubble, and indeed this tangible connection to this crisis that is going on.
And we’re going to have to wait and see how that resonates with voters. He didn’t communicate much about everything we communicated about how all those buildings that didn’t seem to have been made to deal with an earthquake ended up being built. All he said was that we, as a country, have classes to be informed of this crisis and that we deserve to do more in the future. That’s all we got.
But what’s interesting, what he promised, I think the biggest promise he made to his other friends is that we’re going to rebuild. Basically, there will be more construction. He said we’re going to start in March and he needs to rebuild homes for all those other people within a year, I mean, which is a pretty remarkable and incredibly ambitious promise.
So instead of saying, we want application, we want to take a look at how we do this, he says structure is the answer.
Ouais. Il is actually a duplication of this policy that has been a large part of his mandate. It’s building, building, building. That’s the solution. And Erdogan has shown in the 20 years he has been nationwide that he is a survivor.
He is a very skilled politician. And even with a challenge as big as an earthquake of this magnitude, there is a chance that he will succeed and a way to win this election.
[MUSIC IN PROGRESS]
But there’s also this echoing sense of history, that it was a catastrophic earthquake that helped propel Erdogan’s rise on the national stage, and here we are 20 years later, and it’s another catastrophic earthquake he’s facing now that, in many ways, may jeopardize his political future.
[MUSIC IN PROGRESS]
Ben, thank you.
Thankbyou
[MUSIC IN PROGRESS]
‘Ll.
[MUSIC IN PROGRESS]
Here’s what you know today. On Monday, Rupert Murdoch, chairman of the conservative media empire that owns Fox News, testified that several hosts on his networks had promoted the false narrative that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump. In court documents released Monday that are part of a lawsuit filed through Dominion Voting Systems, Murdoch said Fox hosts Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro, Lou Dobbs and Maria Bartiromo cited, “support the false theory. “, in retrospect. “
[MUSIC IN PROGRESS]
Today’s episode was produced by Will Reid, Mooj Zadie, Rob Szypko and Asthaa Chaturvedi. Edited by MJ Davis Lin and Lisa Chow, it features original music by Rowan Niemisto and Mario Lozano, and designed by Chris Wood. Our main theme is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly.
[MUSIC IN PROGRESS]
That’s it for “El Diario. ” My is Sabrina Tavernise. See you tomorrow.
transcription
This transcript was created with speech popularity software. Although it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the audio of the episode before quoting this transcript and email transcripts@nytimes. com if you have any questions.
From the New York Times, I’m Sabrina Tavernise, and this is “The Daily. “
[MUSIC IN PROGRESS]
The scale of the death in the Turkey-Syria earthquake now raises questions about who is to blame. In Turkey, the government has directly blamed developers and asset developers, accusing them of opting for profit over security. But the truth is much more complicated. Today, my colleague Ben Hubbard explains why much of the duty would possibly fall on the Turkish government itself.
[MUSIC IN PROGRESS]
It’s Tuesday, February 28.
So, Ben, we now have more than 50,000 dead in the earthquake in Turkey and Syria. And for weeks, the question we’ve all been asking is, how is it possible that so many other people have died?investigated this factor in Turkey, where loss of life was by far the greatest. Tell us what you have learned so far.
The first thing we have to recognize is that it was a very hard earthquake and it hit a very, very giant territory. So that’s where we started. And when I got to the earthquake zone, after it happened, one of the first things that struck me was that not everything flipped.
You have this confusing mosaic of safe spaces where buildings, at least from the outside, look more or less beautiful, and then suddenly you find one that’s absolutely flat. There was a specific site where we wentwhere a painting team was painting, looking to rescue other people who were trapped in the rubble, and it just so happened that there was an organization of volunteer-based staff in a position to help. They were there with their helmets and equipment. And they were examining the site. And they were commenting on the poor quality that the rebar that was there seemed to have, the cement seemed a little weak. his hands.
And everyone was smacking their tongues and asking, what happened here?What was wrong with those buildings that collapsed?So, this query about those buildings turns into anger.
[MUSIC IN PROGRESS]
Almost a week after the earthquakes, the blame begins.
And he responds, and he responds by suing the builders.
The Turkish government has issued arrest warrants for more than a hundred people.
They come with contractors, architects and engineers.
— accused of botched and construction.
They start by arresting structural contractors, other people who were connected to some of those buildings, and then it speeds up.
Two asset developers were reportedly arrested at airports, accused of fleeing the country.
We saw other people who were perpetrated on national television, with their wives, enter the police car.
So far, another 188 people have been arrested, however, more than six hundred people are now known as possible suspects in connection with those allegations of negligence in construction. And there. . .
[MUSIC IN PROGRESS]
So, the government is focusing on the people in the structure, saying that they are the problem. They are the ones who built those buildings that were not strong enough.
IT IS OK. So the government cracks down on those it says are to blame. In other words, the builders.
But it turns out it’s much, much more confusing than that. I mean, we, myself and my colleagues here in Istanbul, started with this, investigating who those other people were, how the industry worked, and just looking to perceive how what buildings were built and what the disorders were. Why did some buildings collapse and others didn’t?
And we’re still in the early stages of the process. It is even difficult to identify some of those buildings and find out who was to blame for them, who built them. But what we discovered is that the story begins in 1999. That’s when it had the last major earthquake in Turkey.
Desperate rescue efforts were underway in western Turkey after a major earthquake struck overnight.
This is a very strong earthquake that hits the city of Izmit, not Istanbul.
Some buildings staggered and survived, while others collapsed. According to residents, it would possibly have fallen because the two most sensitive floors were built in cans without official permission.
[MUSIC IN PROGRESS]
There is massive, massive damage to the city, collapsed buildings and other people buried, and it is a horrible situation. It kills more than 17,000 people. And the government is savagely punished for its response.
It’s a do-it-yourself rescue, and it’s chaos.
There is only this feeling that they did not have the ability to react in time, to get rescuers, to prepare the survivors.
But as the surprise fades, people’s anger begins to manifest.
A few years later, we have this massive economic crisis that’s hitting people’s wallets. And all of this together, this feeling that the country is so vulnerable to this terrible herbal disaster, plus all the economic pain of this crisis, only creates this massive anger. opposed to the government that was in office at the time.
[APPLAUSE]
And this new Justice and Development Party is riding this wave of anger.
[SPEAKING TURK]:
What you are telling me with this welcome, with this interest, is that Turkey will revel in a primary replenishment after the November elections.
They campaigned on this concept that they were going to be more competent, less corrupt and more transparent than the previous guys. I mean, the fundamental concept was that the previous games had ruined everything and we’re going to go in and we’re going to do a lot more work.
The Justice and Development Party won a landslide victory in Sunday’s national elections.
And then enough electorate brought them to parliament, and they ended up with the ability, in 2003, to appoint the prime minister. And they chose, at the time, this promising politician through the call of Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
So, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has been running the country for 20 years, is coming to force in many tactics as a result of this failed political backlash of the previous government.
This certainly contributes to his rise. And then, in the next few years, the country takes off.
[MUSIC IN PROGRESS]
Green fields on the outskirts of Istanbul, fields that will soon become a site of massive structure.
There’s wonderful economic growth, and a lot of that is, really, this concept of build, build, build.
The skyline adjusts as the city grows and moves away.
Everything goes higher, faster and further. When the new buildings upgrade to the old ones, another economic elegance will settle here.
There are giant portions of society that are emerging in the middle class.
There will be luxury homes designed to appeal to Turkey’s emerging classes.
This concept that you, as a Turkish family, can have your own component in a beautiful city, becomes a reality for a large part of the population that was previously poor.
New grocery malls open almost every month.
And there is only one structure falling at this point.
And there is a lot of land to develop.
Thus, Erdogan’s solution after the earthquake and economic crisis of 1999 is to invest in structure and progression to revive the Turkish economy.
But the dark aspect of this whole structure is that Turkey has very, very active faults in giant portions of the country. This is a land that has stories of earthquakes going back to recorded history and actually each and every explanation of why there will be hard earthquakes in the long term.
So one of the things the government is doing is trying to reform the way buildings are built, get better building codes, get better curtain criteria to verify that new construction that is built can cope with earthquakes.
Because they don’t need buildings to collapse like they did in 1999.
Oui. Et then, they’ve done things like upgrade the engineering calculations you have to do to the amount of design you want to help a construction of a certain size. There have been studies on criteria for the type of fabrics you use, whether it’s concrete, iron, rebar or that sort of thing, and updating them as generation develops. And this procedure has been going on for a long time.
But where is Turkey right now, everyone we talked to essentially said the codes were world-class. Theoretically, those codes are some of the most productive you can find for creating earthquake-resistant buildings. But when we started looking at this in the last few weeks, what’s become transparent is that, in many cases, they’re just not being tracked.
Then, the Turkish government realizes that all these structures carry a risk. They update their building codes. But why don’t other people adhere to them?
It’s partly because, in the midst of this structural boom, this Wild West environment is emerging, so you ended up having massive disorders in the inspection regime. Ideally, to make sure standards are met, you’re going to have smart, independent inspectors stop at sites, locate where things are being done right, or where substandard fabrics are being used. And in many cases, that just didn’t happen.
There is a practice where structured corporations can simply rent personal inspection corporations to go to their sites and conduct inspections.
Private inspection companies? Is that the government’s job?
Of course, that’s the government’s job, but they were able to rent those personal corporations. And personal inspection corporations need to keep operating, and if they have a reputation for shutting down people’s projects, they may no longer be rented, so they have an incentive to approve projects that maybe they don’t.
Wow, that’s a general clash of interests, right? That’s crazy.
Well, it’s even worse than that. Because in some cases, according to many industry professionals we spoke to, structure corporations would set up their own inspection corporations and thus rent out to inspect their own projects.
[MUSIC IN PROGRESS]
So the government has absolutely abdicated the duty of this vital function.
I would say that there were significant deficiencies in the audits put in place to make sure those codes were met, and the result was that some buildings built were not as strong as before.
[MUSIC IN PROGRESS]
‘Ll.
So, Ben, you just told us that Turkey’s anti-seismic codes were world class, but they weren’t enforced. So, Erdogan agrees with all this?
Ouais. Je, one might think because of his history that, of all the politicians in Turkey, he would be incredibly fussy about the enormous force that earthquakes have on politics, but there haven’t been many symptoms of that. And in fact, his government has been quite arrogant about it.
I mean, over the years they’ve grown through those things that are known as amnesty construction.
[MUSIC IN PROGRESS]
What are they?
So, there are many buildings in Turkey that don’t comply with the code and over time, the government becomes aware of that. Or the inspectors find that someone has fenced off their balcony without permission, someone has added some motives for their building, perhaps to earn some extra rent money, someone has to sell the land to a company, which is cutting pillars to get more space, and this is reported to the government because the inspectors discovered it or because neighbors have filed a lawsuit.
So you have those cases of code violations that just pile up and accumulate, and every once in a while, the government issues an amnesty, where it wipes the slate clean. The way it works is that if you’ve been reported for doing something to your construction that violates the code, you pay a fine. And in many cases, other people don’t even want to fix the cause of the code violation, even if it’s something like cutting down the earthen pillars of a construction, which can make it more vulnerable than an earthquake.
So, basically, the government renounces all those violations even though they can lead to harmful situations.
Okay.
So in addition to the fact that the building inspection formula is quite irregular, even when inspections reveal something and locate building code violations, the government simply forgives them. But why?
Well, there are several explanations why. First, the government makes money from it. I mean, whoever has violations of the code that they need to forgive, pays a fine. In the last amnesty, it ended up generating more than $4 billion for the government. So there’s an explanation for why the government likes it.
And the electorate appreciates it very much. People invest cash in real estate. If you are a circle of working Turkish relatives and you have taken your savings and bought an apartment from a circle of relatives or a house from a circle of relatives, the last thing you need is for the government to come and locate a violation of the code and condemn the construction or demolish it, because you will lose your investment. So other people like those things, and that’s why they tend to conduct elections.
The recent high was set in motion in the 2018 presidential election. And next year, Erdogan will follow the path of the crusade in the local elections and essentially brags about it to the people, saying, look how wonderful we’ve done: in this city, we’ve forgiven x number of code violations, and we provide this as this wonderful service that we’ve given to the people. And finally, this new amnesty circular ended up forgiving code violations in more than 7 million sets across the country.
What looks like a bunch of units. How does this figure be?
Ouais. Je means it’s a country of about 80 million people, so yes, 7 million games is a lot of games.
But weren’t other people worried about protecting their homes?
I mean, there were definitely other people who were worried. There is a total organization of seismologists in Turkey that sounded the alarm and made it very clear that, according to all science, it is only a matter of time before stronger earthquakes occur. I think many of them feel that no one is listening to them.
You have inspectors. You have engineers and other people reporting things, I mean. We interviewed a couple, two lawyers, who had filed 51 lawsuits against this builder in their city because they thought he violated the code everywhere. out for that. But there’s something that, I think, is human nature in thinking about something like an earthquake, that nobody knows when it’s going to happen. It can happen tomorrow. That may happen next week. It can happen a hundred years from now.
I think it’s hard, before the earthquake hits, for other people to figure out what it will look like and what it will mean for their lives, and it allows other people to settle for that magical thinking of, like, maybe we’re just going to dodge the ball.
Like, it’s a remote danger, not quick, so I’m going to think about that another day. I’m not going to think about that today.
I mean, it’s reminiscent of climate substitution in the sense that it’s this danger that other people know is coming in the future. But even if you’re convinced it’s there, it’s still remote in your life. And in Meanwhile, you have other things to worry about that seem much more urgent to you and therefore I think it’s part of human nature to focus on the things that are right in front of you.
But it’s up to the government to force other people to do the right thing collectively. But in this case, the Turkish government did not. It made things worse, which brings me back to Erdogan. He stopped those builders, but what about him? Will he and his group have to pay the price?
Well, the big check is going to be the election. Parliamentary and presidential elections are scheduled for May, and they are for him. In other words, he would like to remain in power. He has struggled in the polls this year, largely because of his country’s economic difficulties.
Many voters were quite angry about the way he was running the country even before the earthquake struck. And then there’s this massive herbal crisis that killed all those other people, and it’s hard to see how that benefits you in this election. And so he was, almost every day, he was in the earthquake zone with a very serious look on his face, dressed in this long black coat, meeting with other people living in tent cities, gathering those who suffered the earthquake and seeing the rubble, and indeed this tangible connection to this crisis that is going on.
And we’re going to have to wait and see how that resonates with voters. He didn’t communicate much about everything we communicated about how all those buildings that didn’t seem to have been made to deal with an earthquake ended up being built. All he said was that we, as a country, have classes to be informed of this crisis and that we deserve to do more in the future. That’s all we got.
But what’s interesting, what he promised, I think the biggest promise he made to his other friends is that we’re going to rebuild. Basically, there will be more construction. He said we’re going to start in March and he needs to rebuild homes for all those other people within a year, I mean, which is a pretty remarkable and incredibly ambitious promise.
So instead of saying, we want application, we want to take a look at how we do this, he says structure is the answer.
Ouais. Il is actually a duplication of this policy that has been a large part of his mandate. It’s building, building, building. That’s the solution. And Erdogan has shown in the 20 years he has been nationwide that he is a survivor.
He is a very skilled politician. And even with a challenge as big as an earthquake of this magnitude, there is a chance that he will succeed and a way to win this election.
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But there’s also this echoing sense of history, that it was a catastrophic earthquake that helped propel Erdogan’s rise on the national stage, and here we are 20 years later, and it’s another catastrophic earthquake he’s facing now that, in many ways, may jeopardize his political future.
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Ben, thank you.
Thankbyou
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‘Ll.
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Here’s what you know today. On Monday, Rupert Murdoch, chairman of the conservative media empire that owns Fox News, testified that several hosts on his networks had promoted the false narrative that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump. In court documents released Monday that are part of a lawsuit filed through Dominion Voting Systems, Murdoch said Fox hosts Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro, Lou Dobbs and Maria Bartiromo cited, “support the false theory. “, in retrospect. “
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Today’s episode was produced by Will Reid, Mooj Zadie, Rob Szypko and Asthaa Chaturvedi. Edited by MJ Davis Lin and Lisa Chow, it features original music by Rowan Niemisto and Mario Lozano, and designed by Chris Wood. Our main theme is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly.
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That’s it for “El Diario. ” My is Sabrina Tavernise. See you tomorrow.
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Organized by Sabrina Tavernise
Produced by Will Reid, Mooj Zadie, Rob Szypko and Asthaa Chaturvedi
Edited by MJ Davis Lin and Lisa Chow
Original music through Rowan Niemisto and Marion Lozano
Designed by Chris Wood
The 7. 8-magnitude earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria on Feb. 6 killed more than 50,000 people. The sight of rescuers combing through the rubble raised questions about why so many buildings seemed so insufficient to cope with the earthquakes.
In Turkey, the government has focused on developers and asset developers, accusing them of seeking profit rather than security. But the truth is much more complicated.
Ben Hubbard, Istanbul bureau leader of The New York Times.
Some in Turkey wonder if the number of deaths caused by the earthquake may have been particularly reduced by higher construction standards.
As the death toll mounted, the Turkish government stepped up the criticism.
There are many tactics to pay attention to The Daily. Here’s how.
Our purpose is to make transcripts available the next business day after an episode is posted. You can place them at the top of the page.
Ben Hubbard contributed to the report.
The Daily is directed by Lisa Tobin, Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, MJDavis Lin, Dan Powell, Dave Shaw, Sydney Harper, Robert Jimison, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Anita Badejo, Rob Szypko, Elisheba IttoopArray Chelsea Daniel, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens, Rowan Niemisto, Jody Becker, Rikki Novetsky, John Ketchum, Nina Feldman, Will Reid, Carlos Prieto, Sofia Milan, Ben Calhoun and Susan Lee.
Our theme song is through Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk from Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Paula Szuchman, Lisa Tobin, Larissa Anderson, Wendy Dorr, Julia Simon, Desiree Ibekwe, Renan Borelli, Mahima Chablani, Nell Gallogly, Jeffrey Miranda, Elizabeth Davis-Moorer and Maddy Masiello
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