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In Turkish Election, Some Voters Return to Quake Zone to Cast Ballots

A man walks through the debris of buildings caused by this year's devastating earthquake during the presidential and parliamentary elections, in Antakya, Türkiye, on May 14, 2023. (AFP)
A man walks through the debris of buildings caused by this year's devastating earthquake during the presidential and parliamentary elections, in Antakya, Türkiye, on May 14, 2023. (AFP)
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In Turkish Election, Some Voters Return to Quake Zone to Cast Ballots

A man walks through the debris of buildings caused by this year's devastating earthquake during the presidential and parliamentary elections, in Antakya, Türkiye, on May 14, 2023. (AFP)
A man walks through the debris of buildings caused by this year's devastating earthquake during the presidential and parliamentary elections, in Antakya, Türkiye, on May 14, 2023. (AFP)

Mehmet Ali Fakioglu was made homeless by an earthquake that hit Türkiye in February, but made a 15-hour journey back to the disaster zone to vote on Sunday, recalling the fear he felt when the catastrophe struck and his anger that help was slow to come.

Fakioglu, who has been staying with his son in Istanbul since leaving his home in the Antakya region, remembers the earthquake every day - the moment he ran from his apartment with his wife and daughter as walls banged and cracked.

Fakioglu, 56, declined to say how he voted on Sunday in an election that is seen as the toughest political test yet for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. But as he prepared to cast his ballot, he voiced criticism of the state's slow response to the disaster in which more than 50,000 people were killed.

Alongside a spiraling cost-of-living crisis, the Feb. 6 earthquake and its aftermath has loomed over the campaign. Opinion polls have shown the opposition narrowly ahead of Erdogan, though there is little evidence that the earthquake has changed how people will vote in the presidential and parliamentary election.

Fakioglu is one of hundreds of thousands of people made homeless by the earthquake, many of whom returned home to vote on Sunday.

"I will only say this, everybody should vote with their conscience at the ballot box. We were forgotten, all of us, on that day, the second day even on the third day. Not only in Antakya, but people were forgotten in all those cities," Fakioglu said, referring to the late arrival of help.

"People all around Türkiye should keep this in mind when voting."

Critics and earthquake survivors have accused Erdogan's government of both a slow response and lax enforcement of building rules - failures they said cost lives.

Erdogan said in the days after the quake that the response of the search and rescue teams was not as fast as it could have been. The government said the majority of the collapsed buildings were built before new construction regulations were in place.

Helping people travel home

Political parties - including Erdogan's AK Party - municipalities, and non-governmental organizations have been helping voters to get home in order to cast their ballots from their old registered addresses, providing free transportation.

Oy ve Otesi, an NGO promoting democratic participation, said a scheme it backed to help voters get home for election day had provided 30,000 bus tickets since late April.

"People are interested, people want to go back to vote ... Most of them didn't register new addresses so they will have to go back," said Ertim Orkun, chairman of Oy ve Otesi.

He said around 1.5 million people had left the quake zone, only a portion of whom had registered new addresses for the purpose of voting.

Since some school buildings where voting would normally take place were damaged by the earthquake, polling stations have been set up in containers and tents in the affected area.

Boarding a bus from Istanbul to the province of Hatay in the southeast on Saturday, Kivanc Girisken said he would vote for Erdogan's main challenger, Kemal Kilicdaroglu.

Girisken, 21, said he and his family had spent three weeks in a tent after the quake.

"This election was important even before the earthquake, but this made it even more crucial. When voting, we will take into account the pain we went through and the delay in the government response," Girisken said.

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North Korea Boasts of ‘The World’s Strongest’ Missile, but Experts Say It’s Too Big to Use in War

A view shows what they say is a "Hwasong-19" missile being launched at an undisclosed location in this screengrab obtained from a video released on November 1, 2024. (KRT/via Reuters TV/Handout via Reuters)
A view shows what they say is a "Hwasong-19" missile being launched at an undisclosed location in this screengrab obtained from a video released on November 1, 2024. (KRT/via Reuters TV/Handout via Reuters)
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North Korea Boasts of ‘The World’s Strongest’ Missile, but Experts Say It’s Too Big to Use in War

A view shows what they say is a "Hwasong-19" missile being launched at an undisclosed location in this screengrab obtained from a video released on November 1, 2024. (KRT/via Reuters TV/Handout via Reuters)
A view shows what they say is a "Hwasong-19" missile being launched at an undisclosed location in this screengrab obtained from a video released on November 1, 2024. (KRT/via Reuters TV/Handout via Reuters)

North Korea boasted Friday that the new intercontinental ballistic missile it just test-launched is "the world’s strongest," a claim seen as pure propaganda after experts assessed it as being too big to be useful in a war situation.

The ICBM launched Thursday flew higher and for a longer duration than any other weapon North Korea has tested. But foreign experts say the test failed to show North Korea has mastered some of the last remaining technological hurdles to possess functioning ICBMs that can strike the mainland US.

The North’s Korean Central News Agency identified the missile as a Hwasong-19 and called it "the world’s strongest strategic missile" and "the perfected weapon system." The official media outlet said leader Kim Jong Un observed the launch, describing it as an expression of North Korea’s resolve to respond to external threats to North Korea’s security.

The color and shape of the exhaust flames seen in North Korean state media photos of the launch suggest the missile uses preloaded solid fuel, which makes weapons more agile and harder to detect than liquid propellants that in general must be fueled beforehand.

But experts say the photos show the ICBM and its launch vehicle are both oversized, raising a serious question about their wartime mobility and survivability.

"When missiles get bigger, what happens? The vehicles get larger, too. As the transporter-erector launchers get bigger, their mobility decreases," Lee Sangmin, an expert at South Korea’s Korea Institute for Defense Analyses.

The Hwasong-19 was estimated to be at least 28 meters long (92 feet) while advanced US and Russian ICBMs are less than 20 meters long (66 feet), said Chang Young-keun, a missile expert at Seoul’s Korea Research Institute for National Strategy. He suggested that the missile's size likely helped South Korean intelligence authorities detect the launch plan in advance.

"In the event of a conflict, such an exposure makes the weapon a target of a preemptive attack by opponents so there would be a big issue of survivability," Chang said.

Lee Illwoo, an expert with the Korea Defense Network in South Korea, said North Korea may have developed a larger missile to carry bigger and more destructive warheads or multi-warheads. If that's the case, Lee said North Korea could have used liquid fuels as they generate higher thrust than solid fuels. He said some advanced liquid propellants can be stored in missiles for a few weeks before liftoffs.

Lee said North Korea may have placed a dummy, empty warhead on the Hwasong-19 to make it fly higher.

In recent years, North Korea has reported steady advancement in its efforts to obtain nuclear-tipped missiles. Many foreign experts believe North Korea likely has missiles that can deliver nuclear strikes on all of South Korea, but it has yet to possess nuclear missiles that can strike the mainland US.

The hurdles it has yet to overcome, according to experts, include ensuring its warheads survive the heat and stress of atmospheric reentry, improving the guidance systems for the missiles, and being able to use multiple warheads on a single missile to defeat missile defenses.

"Acquiring reentry technology is currently the most important goal in North Korea’s missile development, specifically for ICBMs, but they just keep increasing the ranges instead. This possibly suggests they still lack confidence in their reentry technology," Lee Sangmin said.

Chang said Friday's state media dispatch on the launch lacks details on the technological aspects of the Hawsong-19 and focused on publicity.

Other North Korean claims about its weapons capabilities have been met with wide outside skepticism.

In June, North Korea claimed to have tested a multiwarhead missile in the first known launch of such a weapon, but South Korea said the weapon instead blew up. In July, when North Korea said it had test-fired a new tactical ballistic missile capable of carrying "a super-large warhead," South Korea said the claim was an attempt to conceal a botched launch.

North Korea's missile program is still a major regional security concern, with the country openly threatening to use its nuclear missiles against its rivals. In a joint statement Thursday, the foreign ministers of South Korea, the US and Japan condemned the ICBM launch as a violation of UN Security Council resolutions and said they're committed to strengthening their efforts to block North Korea's illicit revenue generation funding its missile and nuclear programs.

South Korea's Foreign Ministry said Friday it has imposed unilateral sanctions on 11 North Korean individuals and four organizations for their alleged roles in procuring missile components and generating foreign currency to fund Pyongyang’s weapons program. The sanctions are largely symbolic given that financial transactions between the Koreas have been suspended for years.

Also Friday, South Korea and the US conducted their first-ever joint live-fire exercise using unmanned aerial vehicles as part of efforts to demonstrate their readiness. South Korea’s RQ-4B "Global Hawk" reconnaissance aircraft and the US MQ-9 Reaper strike drone were mobilized for the training, according to South Korea's air force. South Korea and the US have been expanding their regular military drills to cope with North Korea’s evolving nuclear threats.

Observers say that Thursday's launch, the North's first ICBM test in almost a year, was largely meant to grab American attention days before the US presidential election and respond to international condemnation over North Korea's reported dispatch of troops to Russia to support its war against Ukraine.

North Korea's reported troop dispatch highlights the expanding military cooperation between North Korea and Russia. South Korea. The US and others worry North Korea might seek high-tech, sensitive Russian technology to perfect its nuclear and missile programs in return for joining the Russian-Ukraine war.