In the last election in 2018, Erdogan handily defeated his secular opposition rival in that province.
Istanbul:
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan today apologized for the delay in rescue while visiting one of the areas worst hit by the devastating earthquake earlier this month.
Erdogan, who is seeking another term as president after two decades in power, has drawn strong criticism from earthquake survivors in Adıyaman, in the southeast.
In the last election in 2018, Erdogan handily defeated his secular opposition rival in that province.
Erdogan said, “Due to the devastating effect of the tremor and the bad weather, we were not able to work the way we wanted for the first few days in Adıyaman. I apologize for that.”
The February 6 earthquake killed more than 44,000 people in Turkey and thousands in neighboring Syria.
AFP reported on 10 February from Adiyaman on local anger towards the government.
“I didn’t see anyone until 2:00 a.m. the second day after the earthquake,” Mehmet Yildirim, an Adiyaman resident, told AFP at the time.
“No government, no state, no police, no soldiers. Shame on you! You left us to fend for ourselves.”
Just as Erdogan was gathering momentum and starting to lift his approval numbers from suffering little during a crippling economic crisis that erupted last year, disaster struck.
Shortly after the earthquake, Erdogan acknowledged the government’s “shortcomings” in its handling of the disaster.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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