President Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday admitted there were problems with his government’s initial response to a devastating earthquake in southern Turkey, amid anger from those left destitute and frustrated over the slow arrival of rescue teams.
Erdogan, who contests an election in May, said on a visit to the disaster zone that operations were now working normally and promised no one would be left homeless, as the combined reported death toll in Turkey and neighbouring Syria rose past 12,000.
Across a swathe of southern Turkey, people sought temporary shelter and food in freezing winter weather, and waited in anguish by piles of rubble where family and friends might still lie buried.
Rescuers were still finding some people alive. But many Turks have complained of a lack of equipment, expertise and support to rescue those trapped – sometimes even as they could hear cries for help.
“Where is the state? Where have they been for two days? We are begging them. Let us do it, we can get them out,” Sabiha Alinak said near a snow-covered collapsed building in the city of Malatya where her young relatives were trapped.
There were similar scenes and complaints in neighbouring Syria, whose north was hard hit by Monday’s huge quake.
Syria’s ambassador to the United Nations admitted the government had a “lack of capabilities and lack of equipment,” blaming more than a decade of civil war in his country and Western sanctions.
DEATH TOLL SURE TO RISE
The death toll from both countries was expected to rise as hundreds of collapsed buildings in many cities have become tombs for people who had been asleep when the quake hit.
In the Turkish city of Antakya, dozens of bodies, some covered in blankets and sheets and others in body bags, were lined up on the ground outside a hospital.
Melek, 64, bemoaned the lack of rescue teams. “We survived the earthquake, but we will die here due to hunger or cold.”
Many in the disaster zone had slept in their cars or in the streets under blankets in freezing cold, fearful of going back into buildings shaken by the 7.8 magnitude tremor – Turkey’s deadliest since 1999 – and by a second powerful quake hours later.
The confirmed death toll rose to 9,057 in Turkey on Wednesday, and in Syria had climbed to at least 2,950, according to the government and a rescue service operating in the rebel-held northwest.
Turkish authorities released video of rescued survivors, including a young girl in pyjamas, and an older man covered in dust, an unlit cigarette between his fingers as he was pulled from the debris.
Turkish officials say some 13.5 million people were affected in an area spanning roughly 450 km (280 miles) from Adana in the west to Diyarbakir in the east. In Syria, people were killed as far south as Hama, 250 km from the epicentre.
Some who died in Turkey were refugees from Syria’s war. Their body bags arrived at the border in taxis, vans and piled atop flatbed trucks to be taken to final resting places in their homeland.
