Turkey’s Defence Minister, Hulusi Akar, dismissed criticisms regarding the Turkish army’s insufficient disaster relief efforts in earthquake-hit areas, and claimed the military must be deployed to protect the country’s borders.
“Things cannot be handled by pontifications expressed from far away. Who is going to protect the borders, who is going to stay in Syria? Are we supposed to empty Syria? Are we supposed to empty Iraq? The intentions of those blind, who do not want to see, those deaf, who do not want to hear, and our problems, are different,” Akar told Hürriyet newspaper in an interview published on Tuesday.
The Internal Service Law of the Turkish military obligates the armed forces to immediately respond to disasters. Turkey’s armed forces, which historically have been effective in disaster response, are widely criticised for an inadequate response to the 6 February twin earthquakes that hit 10 provinces in the country’s south and created widespread destruction.
For the last three weeks, commentators in Turkey have speculated as to why the armed forces were so slow to respond to the large-scale disaster.
According to some journalists, in the early hours of the disaster, Akar acted immediately and ordered all military units to be ready to move to the earthquake-hit region. But the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who is always wary of a possible military coup, intervened and told the armed forces to wait for his instructions. Some other journalists instead said it was rivalry between Akar and the Ministry of Interior Süleyman Soylu, who is in charge of the police and the gendarmerie, that caused the delayed response.
Akar last week shared the order he gave during the early hours of the earthquake in a timeline, trying to prove that he did what was necessary. The defence minister said that after they had made all necessary preparations to mobilise troops, they had waited for orders. Some journalists claimed Akar’s account was aimed at shifting the blame to either Erdoğan or Soylu.
In his interview with Hürriyet, Akar made similar comments. The minister mentioned criticisms regarding Turkey’s second army, whose headquarters are located in earthquake-hit Malatya. Following the earthquake, many wondered why all second army units did not immediately arrive to reach those in need.
The second army is mainly responsible for protecting Turkey’s eastern and southern borders and is in charge of ground operations into Kurdish-held territories in northern Syria and northern Iraq.
According to Akar, the second army is made up of 22,000 troops and an additional 18,000 troops have been sent to the second army after the earthquake.
Those additional units came from different regions of the country, he told Hürriyet, adding that it was not rational to pool all troops to the earthquake-stricken provinces.
“It is essential to use the personnel technically capable of this work,” Akar said about post-disaster relief efforts. “We have used whatever we could, we are still using them,” he said.
