Professor Sarah Parkinson begins the discussion by outlining the various resources that Turkey has "on paper" to provide disaster relief. These include services provided by the Turkish government, such as local emergency medical services, firefighters, AFAD, which is the Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency in Turkey, and various Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) teams. Parkinson notes that while before the earthquake these entities were seen as mostly apolitical, in the days since the disaster they have become politicized. Other sources of relief include the Turkish military, various NGOs, and the UN system.

Parkinson goes on to discuss the complexities involved in the multi-stage search process, and why it is often a slow and frustrating process for victims' families. Before they can begin pulling people out of the rubble, search and rescue personnel first need to conduct a search to assess the situation and identify where confirmed and potential survivors might be. They then need to conduct a technical search and create worksites, in which they identify the crew and technology needed for the rescue. Then they must obtain medical assistance for those who need it and hand down necessary supplies to people who are trapped. Parkinson explains how the slow nature of these operations can cause tension between the rescue team, who need to follow protocol, and the community, who simply want their loved ones rescued. Parkinson goes on to denote some of the complications of this particular case in Turkey, including crowds angry with both the government and search-and-rescue entities for the slow relief process, a government crackdown on journalists and social media, and poor weather conditions that exacerbate the danger of the situation. Parkinson also briefly discusses the conditions in northern Syria, where medical infrastructure is badly damaged as a result of Syria's ongoing conflict and NGOs such as the White Helmets that provide relief face hostility from the Syrian government.

The discussion then turns to Professor Lisel Hintz, who explains the political causes and effects of the scope of this disaster. She discusses how aspects of the current Justice and Development Party's (AKP) regime prevent relief efforts from taking place as effectively and quickly as they might elsewhere under less authoritarian conditions. One example she considers is how after a major earthquake in Istanbul in 1999, new standards were put in place to get buildings "up to code," or earthquake resistant. However, multiple factors related to crony capitalism meant that construction companies didn't have to adhere to those standards. As one example, in 2018 the Turkish government passed a zoning amnesty law stipulating that if the owner of the building pays a fee, a building that is out of code can continue to exist. The Turkish government made $3 billion from this in the run-up to elections, but as a result many buildings continued to not be earthquake resistant, which contributed to the scale of the disaster. Hintz concludes by discussing how the consolidation and centralization of power by the AKP slows down aspects of relief efforts. The 2018 transition from parliamentary system to executive presidency means that little can be done without orders from the executive, which is not favorable in the disaster conditions Turkey is currently experiencing.

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hosted by Professor Sarah Parkinson


LISEL HINTZ
Professor Hintz studies the arenas in which struggles over various forms of identity – national, ethnic, religious, gender – take place. Her regional focus is on Turkey and its relations with Europe, the US, and the Middle East. Her first book with Oxford University Press (2018) examines how contestation over national identity spills over to shape and be shaped by foreign policy. Her current book project, under contract with Cambridge University Press, investigates Turkey's state-society struggles over identity in the pop culture sphere. Professor Hintz contributes to Foreign Policy, The Washington Post, War on the Rocks, The Boston Globe, and BBC World Service, as well as to academic and policy discussions on Turkey's increasing authoritarianism, opposition dynamics, foreign policy shifts, and identity-related topics including Kurdish, Alevi, and gender issues. Professor Hintz received her PhD in Political Science from George Washington University, was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Cornell University's Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, and was Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Barnard College, Columbia University.

SARAH E. PARKINSON
Sarah Parkinson is Aronson Assistant Professor, Political Science and International Studies at SAIS Europe. She received her PhD from the University of Chicago in 2013 and joined the faculty of Johns Hopkins University in 2016. Her research examines organizational behavior and social change during and following war. Focusing predominantly on the Middle East and North Africa, she uses social network analysis and ethnographic methods to study the ways that actors such as militant organizations, political parties, and humanitarian groups cope with crisis, disruption, and fragmentation. Parkinson has conducted extensive fieldwork among Palestinian and Syrian refugees in Lebanon and with humanitarian organizations in Iraqi Kurdistan. Her work has been published in the American Political Science Review, Social Science and Medicine, The Middle East Report, and the Washington Post's Monkey Cage blog. Parkinson holds a PhD and MA in Political Science from the University of Chicago and a BA in International Studies from Johns Hopkins University. She has held fellowships at the Institute for Advanced Study at the University of Minnesota, the Institute for Middle East Studies at George Washington University, and Yale University's Program on Order, Conflict, and Violence. Parkinson serves on the Steering Committee of the Project on Middle East Political Science.