Anger is growing in Turkey against President Erdogan over his handling of the devastating earthquake

The nightmare continues in Turkey and Syria, with no end in sight. Against the clock and struggling with bad weather and lack of infrastructure, the rescue teams they kept pulling out survivors trapped in the rubble of Monday’s earthquake, which has already claimed more than 12,000 lives.

But the tasks tackled another crucial issue for President Recep Erdogan’s government, which unexpectedly found itself at the center of furious criticism from the victims and by the opposition, accused of having mishandled the catastrophe. A Turkish newspaper even denounced that Ankara had blocked access to Twitter.

For two days and nights since the 7.8-magnitude quake, which centered in Kahramanmaras in the south of the country and close to Syrian soil, thousands of rescuers worked in freezing temperatures to find survivors under collapsed buildings on both sides of the border. .

Turkish Red Crescent chief Kerem Kinik warned the first 72 hours were crucial for the rescue, but noted it was hampered by “adverse weather conditions”.

Horror

However, on Wednesday rescuers managed to rescue several children found under a collapsed boulder in Turkey’s hard-hit province of Hatay. where entire municipalities have disappeared.

As of tonight in Turkey, where seven days of mourning and three months of state of emergency have been declared in the most affected provinces, the death toll has reached 9,057 people. In Syria, a country punished by more than a decade of civil war, the death toll has reached 2,662.

Ankara and Damascus estimate the total number of 11,719 dead.. WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said time was running out for the thousands injured and missing in the rubble and that the global number could double.

As the hours go by, frustration and anger also grow. for the little help which reaches some areas located in areas that are difficult to access or affected by geopolitical conflicts.

President Erdogan, who visited the province of Hatay, admitted yesterday that there were “deficiencies” in the response to the earthquake, stating that “it is impossible to be prepared for such a catastrophe”. But although he has spoken to the victims and expressed concern about the disaster, your government seems to have locked down access to the social network Twitter amid growing public unrest.

As reported by the Cumhuriyet newspaper, two of the three Internet operators blocked access to Twitter completely, while the third allowed slower access. In the past, the authorities had blocked access to social networks after disasters, terrorist attacks or social and political protests.

The critics

Criticism was particularly fierce in the disaster area. “Where is the state? Where?”, Ali desperate in Kahramanmaras, the epicenter of the earthquake, frustrated that he could not find his brother and nephew. The anguish was shared in the Syrian city of Jindires, in an area controlled by rebels fighting the regime in Damascus.

“There are about 400, 500 people trapped under each building, with only 10 trying to get them out. And there are no cars,” Hassan complained to the global press.

The main opposition party in Turkey, the social democrat CHP, he went so far as to blame Erdogan for the devastating scale of the earthquake and denounced that the central state has blocked aid to mayors dominated by opponents.

“Let me put it very clearly. If there is one main responsible for this process, it is Erdogan himself. It is this government that hasn’t prepared the country for the earthquake for 20 years,” said Kilicdaroglu, a possible presidential candidate on May 14, giving an indication of how the earthquake is starting to hit the government of the “Sultan of Constantinople.”