Earthquake preparedness is not a matter of politics

Istanbul, for all its rapid growth, is a startling example of how investor desires can trump the needs of citizens when it comes to natural disasters, writes Joseph Dana

Investment in Istanbul's international prestige has come at a heavy price for ordinary residents. Fatih Saribas / Reuters

The devastating earthquake that rocked Nepal last weekend and left thousands dead could easily repeat itself in a number of cities across the world. The prospect of natural disaster – whether flooding in Bangladesh or hurricanes in New Orleans – is forcing urban planners to rethink protection and preparedness. When it comes to earthquake preparedness, we need to look no further than Istanbul to see the fine line between proper city infrastructure and politicking.

The views of the Bosphorus have long intoxicated residents and travellers strolling the streets of the European side of Istanbul.

If you fix your gaze on the buildings these days, an annoying flickering light takes away from the ancient splendour of the city. These flashing lights are part of a system that detects vibrations in the ground and, in the case of an earthquake, shuts off the gas line in a building to avoid an explosion. These earthquake-detection boxes are an offensive but unavoidable reality of Istanbul life.

Last summer, I was shaken in my Istanbul flat by the tremors of an earthquake that originated in the Aegean Sea on the same fault line that extends to Istanbul’s borders. The ensuing panic in the city revealed Turks’ deeply held fear of the next big earthquake.

With 15 million residents, Istanbul sits close to one of the most active earthquake faults in the region. In 1999, a 7.6-magnitude earthquake struck the Turkish town of Izmit, nestled halfway between Istanbul and the Turkish capital Ankara, leaving nearly 17,000 people dead, one million homeless and billions of dollars in damage.

A report released last summer by scientists from Turkey and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology warned that a magnitude-seven or higher earthquake is building up on a quiet fault just eight kilometres west of Istanbul and could strike in the next decade. The way in which Istanbul has grown in the 20th century and the nature of the city’s housing stock has striking parallels with Nepal’s notoriously shoddy building standards.

Throughout the 1950s, the Turkish government spearheaded a nationwide push encouraging settlement in the country’s urban centres. Unable to accommodate droves of villagers from the Turkish heartland flooding Istanbul and Ankara, the government turned a blind eye to widespread informal settlements that popped up throughout its cities. Known in Turkish as gecekondu – meaning “built at night” – these informal settlements quickly became the backbone of Istanbul and still form the foundation of many neighbourhoods.

Similar to the housing stock in Nepal, gecekondu structures are woefully underprepared for even a mild earthquake and present the government with a grave challenge when it comes to disaster preparedness.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s president and a former mayor of Istanbul, has made little effort to conceal his grand vision for the former capital city of the Ottoman Empire.

With plans to build Europe’s largest airport in Istanbul’s northern forests and a new bridge spanning the Bosphorus Strait, Mr Erdogan’s AKP has invested heavily in major infrastructure projects, at the expense of widespread earthquake-proofing of existing housing stock.

However, Mr Erdogan’s government did use a selective application of earthquake-preparedness to expropriate land and to push some residents to the margins of the city, allowing for the creation of new luxury apartments.

In the past 10 years, the city government has targeted a series of low-income neighbourhoods – most of them former gecekondu occupying prime locations. These houses were declared unfit – although researchers say about 90 per cent of Istanbul’s buildings could be categorised as such as they wouldn’t survive a serious earthquake.

The neighbourhood of Okymedani, a 10-minute drive from the city’s central Taksim Square, is a perfect example of these earthquake gentrification plans in action.

Sitting on a prime ridge in the centre of the city’s European side, Okymedani is made up of mostly Alevis, a Shiite minority in predominantly Sunni Turkey. For years the city government has coveted the neighbourhood’s land for gentrification.

When environmental protesters occupied Istanbul’s Gezi Park in May 2013 in opposition to plans to destroy one of the last green spaces in the central part of the city, they were quickly joined by thousands of residents who had been forced out or were in the process of being evicted from their homes under the guise of earthquake safety.

The Nepal disaster is evidence that there are no easy solutions to the problems of natural calamities. Our cities continue to grow at an alarming pace and sometimes priorities are misplaced for political reasons. Istanbul, for all its rapid growth, is a startling example of how investor desires can trump the needs of citizens. Earthquake preparedness in the urban world is no longer an issue for city councils but one that reaches to the very heart of political discourse.

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