Turkiye’s quake survivors fear being left out of May vote

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan attends a ceremony in Diyarbakir, Turkiye. (Reuters)
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Updated 16 April 2023
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Turkiye’s quake survivors fear being left out of May vote

  • Campaign to ensure that more than 3m people displaced by February disaster can vote in general election

ANKARA: Ali, a 23-year-old student, lost everything in Turkiye’s earthquake.

His parents are missing and his ancient hometown, Antakya, lies in ruins.
To fight back, Ali, who like many survivors declines to give his full name, has launched a drive to ensure that more than 3 million people displaced by the February disaster can vote in next month’s general election.
The May 14 ballot promises to be perilous for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a dominant leader forced into the unusual position of apologizing for his government’s response to Turkiye’s worst disaster of modern times.
Rescuers and relief workers took days to reach some ravaged areas, creating a sense of abandonment and directing anger at officials for a death toll that has topped 50,000.
“It’s important to reflect this anger at the polls,” said Ali, who now lives in Ankara.

BACKGROUND

May 14 ballot promises to be perilous for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a dominant leader forced into the unusual position of apologizing for his government’s response to Turkiye’s worst disaster of modern times.

With friends, he launched an appeal on Twitter asking political parties to pay the bus tickets of students who had to leave Antakya but want to return to cast their votes.
The main opposition CHP party has pledged its support.
People who sought shelter in cities such as Ankara, Istanbul and Mersin on Turkiye’s southern coast had until April 2 to register their new voting address.
Those who missed out have to return to their ruined cities to cast ballots. Erdogan’s opponents view the early deadline as a covert government effort to suppress the protest vote.
“People lost loved ones and everything that was precious to them. Most were in no condition to take care of their election registration,” said Ali Oztunc, a CHP deputy representing Kahramanmaras, near the epicenter of the 7.8-magnitude quake.
Only 50,000 of the 820,000 registered voters in Kahramanmaras were able to change their registration, according to Oztunc, who estimates that half of the province’s residents have left.
That means hundreds of thousands will have to somehow find their way back to take part in what is widely seen as Turkiye’s most important election in its post-Ottoman history.
“It is impossible to transport so many people,” said Oztunc.
“It would take thousands of buses and that would create a giant traffic jam. No party can organize that.”
The CHP’s leader, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, is the opposition’s joint candidate in the knife-edge vote.
The party’s vice president, Onursal Adiguzel, openly accuses officials of trying to tamp down turnout among the displaced.
“The authorities could have extended the deadline to assist with the registration,” Adiguzel said.
“But they are afraid of the victims,” he said. “They are doing everything to hinder the vote.”
Forced to leave Kahramanmaras, father-of-two Abdullah said he was actively discouraged by civil servants from changing his registration address.
“I was told that I would lose my rights to public aid for earthquake victims,” Abdullah said at his temporary home in Ankara.
“So I kept my address in Kahramanmaras. But I don’t know how I’ll be able to go there and vote.”
At a shelter in the suburbs of Ankara, only 120 of the 525 displaced families had taken the necessary steps to change their legal address.
Eymen Gassaloglu, 34, who lives at the shelter with her two daughters, was determined to return to Antakya on election day — even if it meant sleeping in a tent.
“It’s about my future,” said Gassaloglu. “I’ll vote no matter what.”
Some said returning to the province would also give them a chance to monitor voting and report any irregularities.
Erdogan’s critics fear that voting lists will include people who went missing but not officially declared dead, creating room for manipulation by election officials.
“The authorities do not openly disclose the number of missing people. This is a concern,” Adiguzel, the CHP vice president, said.
Ozgur Yusuf Kavukcu, 45, managed to register to vote in Ankara. But most of his friends will have to return to Antakya, a ghost town where just a tiny fraction of the buildings has survived unscathed.
“I think free elections are impossible under such conditions,” Kavukcu said.
“But there is no other choice. We have already lost a lot with the earthquake. Losing the expression of our free will would be another disaster.”

 


Turkiye says Israel leading Middle East to ‘total disaster’

Updated 12 sec ago
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Turkiye says Israel leading Middle East to ‘total disaster’

“Israel is now leading the region to the brink of total disaster,” Fidan said
He called for an end to the “unlimited aggression” against Iran

ISATANBUL: Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan on Saturday accused Israel of leading the Middle East toward “total disaster” by attacking Iran on June 13.

“Israel is now leading the region to the brink of total disaster by attacking Iran, our neighbor,” he told a summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Istanbul.

“There is no Palestinian, Lebanese, Syrian, Yemeni or Iranian problem but there is clearly an Israeli problem,” Fidan said.

He called for an end to the “unlimited aggression” against Iran.

“We must prevent the situation from deteriorating into a spiral of violence that would further jeopardize regional and global security,” he added.

Speaking after Fidan, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Western leaders of providing “unconditional support” to Israel.

He said Turkiye would not allow borders in the Middle East to be redrawn “in blood.”

“It is vital for us to show more solidarity to end Israel’s banditry — not only in Palestine but also in Syria, in Lebanon and in Iran,” he told the OIC’s 57 member countries.

The OIC, founded in 1969, says its mission is to “safeguard and protect the interests of the Muslim world in the spirit of promoting international peace and harmony.”

Iran says more than 400 killed since start of war with Israel

Updated 21 min 56 sec ago
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Iran says more than 400 killed since start of war with Israel

  • Attacks have claimed the lives of over 400 defenseless Iranians and left 3,056 others wounded

TEHRAN: Israeli strikes on Iran have killed more than 400 people since they began last week, Iran’s health ministry said in an updated toll on Saturday, as fighting raged between the two foes.

“As of this morning, Israeli attacks have claimed the lives of over 400 defenseless Iranians and left 3,056 others wounded by missiles and drones,” health ministry spokesman Hossein Kermanpour said in a post on X.


Erdogan says UNRWA to open office in Turkiye, calls for more support for agency

Updated 21 June 2025
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Erdogan says UNRWA to open office in Turkiye, calls for more support for agency

  • Turkiye has called Israel’s assault on Gaza genocide and its move to ban UNRWA a violation of international law
  • “We expect our organization and each member state to provide financial and moral support to UNRWA to thwart Israel’s games,” Erdogan said

ANKARA: The United Nations’ Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA will open an office in Ankara, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday, urging Muslim countries to give the agency more support after Israel banned it.

Israel last year banned UNRWA, saying it had employed members of Palestinian militant group Hamas who took part in the October 2023 attacks on Israel that triggered the Gaza war.

Turkiye has called Israel’s assault on Gaza genocide and its move to ban UNRWA a violation of international law, particularly amid worsening humanitarian conditions in Gaza, which has been reduced to rubble with millions displaced.

Addressing foreign ministers of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation in Istanbul, Erdogan said opening an Ankara UNRWA office would deepen Turkiye’s support for the agency.

“We must not allow UNRWA, which plays an irreplaceable role in terms of taking care of Palestinian refugees, to be paralyzed by Israel. We expect our organization and each member state to provide financial and moral support to UNRWA to thwart Israel’s games,” Erdogan said.

A Turkish diplomatic source said Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan and UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini were expected to sign an accord on the sidelines of the OIC meeting in Istanbul on establishing the office.

Turkiye has given UNRWA $10 million a year between 2023 and 2025. In 2024, it also transferred $2 million and sent another $3 million from its AFAD disaster management authority.

Israel has handed responsibility for distributing much of the aid it lets into Gaza to a new US-backed group, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which operates three sites in areas guarded by Israeli troops. The UN has rejected the GHF operation saying its distribution work is inadequate, dangerous and violates humanitarian impartiality principles.

Previously, aid to Gaza’s 2.3 million residents had been distributed mainly by UN agencies such as UNRWA with thousands of staff at hundreds of sites across the enclave.


Israel says killed three Iranian commanders in fresh wave of strikes

Updated 21 June 2025
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Israel says killed three Iranian commanders in fresh wave of strikes

  • Israel’s military said its fighter jets successfully targeted top Iranian official Saeed Izadi
  • It also announced the deaths of two other commanders from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards

JERUSALEM: Israel said Saturday it had killed three Iranian commanders in its unprecedented bombing campaign across the Islamic republic, which Foreign Minister Gideon Saar claimed had already delayed Tehran’s presumed nuclear plans by two years.

Israel’s military said its fighter jets successfully targeted top Iranian official Saeed Izadi, in charge of coordination with Palestinian militant group Hamas, in Qom south of Tehran and announced the deaths of two other commanders from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.

As Israel continued to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities and military targets, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said in an interview that by the country’s own assessment, it had “already delayed for at least two or three years the possibility for them to have a nuclear bomb.”

“We will do everything that we can do there in order to remove this threat,” Saar told German newspaper Bild, asserting Israel’s onslaught would continue.

Israel and Iran have traded wave after wave of devastating strikes, after Israel launched its aerial campaign on June 13, saying Tehran was on the verge of developing a nuclear weapon — an ambition Iran has denied.

Israel said it had attacked Iran’s Isfahan nuclear site for a second time after its air force said it had also launched salvos against missile storage and launch sites in central Iran.

The military later said it struck military infrastructure in southwest Iran.

US President Donald Trump warned on Friday that Tehran has a “maximum” of two weeks to avoid possible American air strikes, as Washington weighs whether to join Israel’s unprecedented bombing campaign.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi arrived in Istanbul on Saturday, for a meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation to discuss the conflict.

Top diplomats from Britain, France and Germany met Araghchi in Geneva on Friday, and urged him to resume talks with the United States that had been derailed by Israel’s attacks.

But Araghchi told NBC News after the meeting that “we’re not prepared to negotiate with them (the United States) anymore, as long as the aggression continues.”

Trump was dismissive of European diplomatic efforts, telling reporters, “Iran doesn’t want to speak to Europe. They want to speak to us. Europe is not going to be able to help in this.”

Trump also said he is unlikely to ask Israel to stop its attacks to get Iran back to the table.

“If somebody’s winning, it’s a little bit harder to do,” he said.

Any US involvement would likely feature powerful bunker-busting bombs that no other country possesses to destroy an underground uranium enrichment facility in Fordo.

A US-based NGO, the Human Rights Activists News Agency, said on Friday that based on its sources and media reports at least 657 people have been killed in Iran, including 263 civilians.

Iran’s health ministry said on Saturday at least 350 people had been killed in the Israeli strikes including military commanders, nuclear scientists and civilians.

Nasrin, 39, who gave only her first name, explained she had been thrown across a room in her Tehran home by an Israeli strike.

“I just hit the wall. I don’t know how long I was unconscious. When I woke up, I was covered in blood from head to toe,” she said as she received treatment at Hazrat Rasool hospital in the Iranian capital.

Traffic police and Fars news agency reported congestion on roads into Tehran on Saturday, indicating some inhabitants were returning to the capital.

Internet access remained highly unstable and limited in Tehran on Saturday, with slow connections and many sites still inaccessible, according to AFP journalists.

Iran’s retaliatory strikes have killed at least 25 people, in Israel, according to official figures.

Overnight, Iran said it targeted central Israel with drones and missiles.

Israeli rescuers said there were no casualties after an Iranian missile struck a residential building in Beit She’an.

At the site of the strike in the north of Israel, mounds of soil had been gouged from the ground and the wall of a ground-floor room destroyed.

Israel’s National Public Diplomacy Directorate said more than 450 missiles have been fired at the country so far, along with about 400 drones.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said they had targeted military sites and air force bases.

Western powers have repeatedly expressed concerns about the rapid expansion of Iran’s nuclear program, questioning in particular the country’s accelerated uranium enrichment.

The International Atomic Energy Agency’s chief Rafael Grossi has said that Iran is the only country without nuclear weapons to enrich uranium to 60 percent.

However, it added that there was no evidence Tehran had all the components to make a functioning nuclear warhead.

Grossi told CNN it was “pure speculation” to say how long it would take Iran to develop weapons.


GCC ambassadors raise concern about safety of nuclear facilities amid Israel-Iran conflict

Updated 21 June 2025
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GCC ambassadors raise concern about safety of nuclear facilities amid Israel-Iran conflict

  • The ambassadors warned Grossi during a meeting in Vienna about the “dangerous repercussions” of targeting nuclear facilities
  • The warning comes after the Israeli military said at one point that it had struck Iran's Bushehr facility, but later said the comment had been made by mistake

CAIRO: Gulf Cooperation Council ambassadors have expressed concerns to UN nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi about the safety of nuclear facilities close to their countries amid the Israeli-Iranian crisis, Qatar state news agency reported on Saturday.
The ambassadors warned Grossi during a meeting in Vienna about the “dangerous repercussions” of targeting nuclear facilities.
The warning comes after the Israeli military said at one point on Thursday that it had struck the Russian-built Bushehr facility, but later said the comment had been made by mistake. Bushehr is Iran’s only operating nuclear power plant, which sits on the Gulf coast.
The potential consequences of an attack on the plant — contaminating the air and water — have long been a concern in the Gulf states.