EMEP's February 6 message: The government is not taking precautions, it is expanding areas for rent-seeking

According to official figures, more than 50 thousand citizens lost their lives in the two major earthquakes centered in Kahramanmaraş on February 6. In a statement issued on the anniversary of the earthquake, the Labor Party (EMEP) stated that instead of taking precautions, the government is threatening voters and expanding rent-seeking areas within the scope of urban transformation.

The statement, which recalls that the government could not even intervene for a very long time immediately after the earthquake, is as follows:

Although a year has passed since the February 6 earthquakes, which caused massive destruction in eleven provinces and were felt across a wide geography including Syria, Lebanon, Cyprus, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Iran, and Egypt, the problems of the people still living in tents and containers in the earthquake zone have not been solved.

While the government failed to even intervene for a very long time immediately after the earthquake, labor and democracy forces, including our party, mobilized all their resources to organize great solidarity for our earthquake-stricken citizens. The government, on the other hand, tried to seize the aid collected from within the country and abroad and turned them into advertisements as if they were state-party support.

According to official figures, the number of people who died in the earthquake was announced as 53 thousand 537. However, this week, the People's Alliance's Istanbul candidate Murat Kurum said that 130 thousand people died. It is not the first time that the lies resorted to by the government, which drags people to death with its rent-seeking urban and housing policies and the zoning amnesties it has issued, to cover up this crime have been revealed one by one.

The government, which is calculating how to derive profit and rent from the land that emerged due to the destruction in the earthquake zones, is not only failing to take any precautions regarding the approaching, probable earthquakes but is also expanding rent-seeking areas within the scope of urban transformation. The 'Reserve Area' law, which gives it the right to evacuate any building it wants and seize any plot of land it wants without question, is one of these. Within the scope of this law, regions, especially in Istanbul, have been shared by capital.

The reality of the earthquake has also been turned into a subject of blackmail, intimidation, and bargaining against the public for the upcoming local elections. President Erdoğan's statement in Hatay, "If the central government and local government do not join hands, if they are not in solidarity, that city will not receive anything. Did it come to Hatay? Currently, Hatay has remained strange, Hatay has remained forlorn," is an election blackmail. As long as Turkey, which is an earthquake country, is governed by capital governments whose priority is profit and rent, natural disasters will continue to be experienced with great destruction.

On the other hand, it is also significant that the CHP has re-nominated a name from Hatay whose earthquake record is clear. The preference of a political understanding that does not settle accounts with rent-seeking capital policies means that it agrees with the plans prepared by the government for the earthquake zone.

Since February 6, small and large tremors have continued to occur in the region. Scientists also point out that new earthquakes are imminent. Despite this, the government continues to take no precautions. Scientists' recommendations should be taken into account, urban transformation should be removed from being rent-based transformation and earthquake-resistant housing should be built for the public, earthquake assembly areas should be created, equipment and teams should be prepared for urgent and rapid intervention, policies that turn a natural disaster into a massacre should be abandoned; and the 'Reserve Area' law should be canceled. The March 31 local elections should be an area for settling accounts with the capital government that pursues profit and rent, which brings nothing but death and destruction to the public. Blackmail and threats made over the earthquake should be rendered ineffective.