Erdogan Pins Election Hopes on ‘Building Türkiye’ Mission after Quake

Recep Tayyip Erdogan rose to power 20 years ago as Türkiye emerged from the twin blows of rampant inflation and a deadly earthquake, promising a new era of sound government after the coalition of the time was accused of mismanaging both crises.

As he seeks to extend his rule into a third decade, modern Türkiye’s longest serving leader is blamed by opponents for fueling runaway inflation once again, and letting constructors flout earthquake regulations which could have saved lives.

Elections due in June - if they can be held in southern Türkiye’s earthquake zone where millions are homeless - are shaping up to be President Erdogan's toughest test to date at the ballot box.

His Islamist-rooted AK Party came to power in 2002 amid a financial crisis and following the collapse of a coalition government facing strong criticism over its handling of the response to a devastating 1999 earthquake.

Since the latest quake, the 68-year-old veteran of more than a dozen election victories has toured shattered cities, promising rapid reconstruction and punishment for constructors who skirted rules aimed at making buildings safe.

But that may not be enough to convince angry survivors whose homes crumpled into dust in the 7.8 magnitude quake which killed tens of thousands of people, and who said emergency rescue teams were too slow to deploy.

The leader of the main opposition Republican People's Party Kemal Kilicdaroglu, Erdogan's possible rival in the presidential vote, blamed the scale of the damage on "systematic profiteering politics" during Erdogan's two decades in power.

"If there is anyone responsible for this process, it is Erdogan. It is this ruling party that has not prepared the country for an earthquake for 20 years," he said.

Officials have said Erdogan, who turns 69 on Sunday, considered delaying the elections but now favors going ahead, confident he can rally Turkish voters around a slogan for his post-earthquake mission: "We're building Türkiye together".

"Erdogan was really pained, even shaken by the earthquake. But by no means did he give up and there is no despair," one source close to him said, adding that he has shown flashes of anger when he thought people were not delivering.

The fiery campaigner has also appeared weary at times.

"His work got heavier - he was already busy," the source said. "When the visits to the earthquake sites are included ... he may seem tired, which is normal."

Survived attempted coup

At stake in the presidential and parliamentary elections is the direction of a country which Erdogan has increasingly shaped to his vision of a pious, conservative society and assertive regional player.

Opponents have vowed to revoke the powerful executive presidency he created, returning Türkiye to parliamentary democracy and restoring independence to a central bank which implemented his call for low interest rates - driving economic growth but crashing the lira and firing up inflation.

Such high stakes are nothing new for a leader who survived an attempted military coup in 2016 when rogue soldiers attacked parliament and killed 250 people.

The son of a poor sea captain, he rose from humble roots in a poor district of Istanbul where he attended Islamic vocational school, entering politics as a local party youth branch leader.

After serving as mayor of Istanbul, he stepped onto the national stage as head of the AK Party, which triumphed in 2002 national elections. He became prime minister the following year, in March 2003.

At the height of his success, Türkiye enjoyed a protracted economic boom, with new roads, hospitals and schools and rising living standards for its 80 million people.

His AK Party tamed Türkiye’s military, which had toppled four governments since 1960, and in 2005 began talks to secure a decades-long ambition to join the European Union - a process which has now come to a grinding halt.

Western allies initially saw Erdogan's Türkiye as a vibrant mix of Islam and democracy which could be a model for Middle East states struggling to shake off stagnation.

But his drive to wield greater control polarized the country and alarmed international partners. Fervent supporters saw it as just reward for a leader who put Islamist teachings back at the core of public life and championed the pious working classes.

Opponents portrayed it as a lurch into authoritarianism by a leader addicted to power.

After the coup attempt authorities launched a crackdown, jailing more than 77,000 people pending trial and dismissing or suspending 150,000 from state jobs. Media rights groups say Türkiye became the world's biggest jailer of journalists.

Erdogan's government said the purge was justified by threats from coup supporters, as well as ISIS and Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants.

At home, a sprawling new presidential palace complex on the edge of Ankara became a striking sign of his new powers, while abroad Türkiye intervened in Syria, Iraq and Libya - often deploying Turkish-made military drones with decisive force.

While they forged an indispensable role for Türkiye, the interventions won few allies. Faced with a struggling economy, a weak currency and a countdown to this year's election, Erdogan sought rapprochement with rivals across the region.

Now he must convince voters he is the leader to rebuild Türkiye from the rubble after this month's earthquake.

"The size of the calamity is so big that the electoral cycle will inevitably be affected by this tragedy. That will be, in all likelihood, to the detriment of the ruling AK Party and President Erdogan," said Sinan Ulgen, director of the Istanbul-based Center for Economic and Foreign Policy Studies.

Golden fields of wheat no longer produce the bounty they once did in Morocco. A six-year drought has imperiled the country's entire agriculture sector, including farmers who grow cereals and grains used to feed humans and livestock.

The North African nation projects this year's harvest will be smaller than last year in both volume and acreage, putting farmers out of work and requiring more imports and government subsidies to prevent the price of staples like flour from rising for everyday consumers.

"In the past, we used to have a bounty — a lot of wheat. But during the last seven or eight years, the harvest has been very low because of the drought," said Al Housni Belhoussni, a small-scale farmer who has long tilled fields outside of the city of Kenitra.

Belhoussni's plight is familiar to grain farmers throughout the world confronting a hotter and drier future. Climate change is imperiling the food supply and shrinking the annual yields of cereals that dominate diets around the world — wheat, rice, maize and barley.

In North Africa, among the regions thought of as most vulnerable to climate change, delays to annual rains and inconsistent weather patterns have pushed the growing season later in the year and made planning difficult for farmers.

In Morocco, where cereals account for most of the farmed land and agriculture employs the majority of workers in rural regions, the drought is wreaking havoc and touching off major changes that will transform the makeup of the economy. It has forced some to leave their fields fallow. It has also made the areas they do elect to cultivate less productive, producing far fewer sacks of wheat to sell than they once did.

In response, the government has announced restrictions on water use in urban areas — including on public baths and car washes — and in rural ones, where water going to farms has been rationed.

"The late rains during the autumn season affected the agriculture campaign. This year, only the spring rains, especially during the month of March, managed to rescue the crops," said Abdelkrim Naaman, the chairman of Nalsya. The organization has advised farmers on seeding, irrigation and drought mitigation as less rain falls and less water flows through Morocco's rivers.

The Agriculture Ministry estimates that this year's wheat harvest will yield roughly 3.4 million tons (3.1 billion kilograms), far less than last year's 6.1 million tons (5.5 billion kilograms) — a yield that was still considered low. The amount of land seeded has dramatically shrunk as well, from 14,170 square miles (36,700 square kilometers) to 9,540 square miles (24,700 square kilometers).

Such a drop constitutes a crisis, said Driss Aissaoui, an analyst and former member of the Moroccan Ministry for Agriculture.

"When we say crisis, this means that you have to import more," he said. "We are in a country where drought has become a structural issue."

Leaning more on imports means the government will have to continue subsidizing prices to ensure households and livestock farmers can afford dietary staples for their families and flocks, said Rachid Benali, the chairman of the farming lobby COMADER.

The country imported nearly 2.5 million tons of common wheat between January and June. However, such a solution may have an expiration date, particularly because Morocco's primary source of wheat, France, is facing shrinking harvests as well.

The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization ranked Morocco as the world's sixth-largest wheat importer this year, between Türkiye and Bangladesh, which both have much bigger populations.

"Morocco has known droughts like this and in some cases known droughts that las longer than 10 years. But the problem, this time especially, is climate change," Benali said.

Erdogan Pins Election Hopes on ‘Building Türkiye’ Mission after Quake