The 1999 calamity killed more than 17,000 people and put the shoddiness of Turkey's buildings on soul-crushing display. And 20 years later you see this happen," he said. Modernising the infrastructure was one of its main promises from the start. "They came with an earthquake and they might leave with an earthquake," Ankara University assistant professor Melih Yesilbag said of Erdogan's Islamic-rooted party. The Turkish leader now hopes a similar mix of economic despair and anguish over an even deadlier pre-dawn quake in February does not push him out in elections next Sunday. Its ferocity killed thousands of people in their sleep and helped bring down a Turkish government.įury over the scale of the 1999 disaster fed into broader economic discontent that ultimately propelled Recep Tayyip Erdogan to power. The earthquake's frightening rumble came deep in the night. Recep Tayyip Erdogan's legacy could be defined by two huge quakes that hit Turkey more than two decades apart AFP
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