Thread by @HetavRojan

In the past 15 years, Turkey has become a major global humanitarian actor. Ankara has high-profile operations in Gaza, Somalia, Syria, Pakistan and Myanmar.

Then, why is it struggling with its own emergency response?

You guessed it: Internal power politics.
A thread🧵

We're going to talk about 3 factors:
- AFAD's role as a proxy for AKP humanitarian diplomacy.
- Shaping operations: Erdogan, Gülen and ancièn regime Kemalists.
- Government's forced removal of publicly elected mayors in Turkey's Southeast.

Let’s start by looking at how the relationship between aid agencies and the govt. Turkey has 3 prominent actors on the politico-humanitarian scene: AFAD, TIKA and Red Crescent (Kizilay). All are kept in a tight loop legally around the Interior Ministry.

But as we’ve seen in the last 72hrs, the govt keeps all decisions centralised around Erdogan’s closest cabinet. Why? We’ll come to that in a moment. First, lets look at their main use-case.

To start, the orgs are vehicles for political influence. AKP defines humanitarian diplomacy as a key component of its foreign policy. It provides aid to states where other donors are absent or weak (Somalia) and builds networks to further foreign policy objectives. Classic.

In 2002, on the heels of a economic upswing and with its GNP booming, AKP’s Turkey opened up to the world with aid to bolster its political/economical ties with Islamo-Turkic neighbours. Domestically, AKP ventured deeper into the faith-based charity landscape to bolster voters.

Paranthesis: Remember the fatal Mavi Marmara flottila incident outside Gaza? That was part of the AKP’s humanitarian virtue signalling efforts to rally Islamist demographics and tying Erdogan’s firebrand populism around the Palestine agenda in Turkish politics.

To effectively use humanitarianism as a political tool both international and domestic, the AKP first had to streamline the humanitarian actors to fit into their use-case. That meant weeding out spoilers.

As the AKP moved in, the #1 actor on the humanitarian scene was Turkish Red Crescent. It had historically been operated by Kemalists (broad term yes). For its workers, it carried an organisational self-understanding of Kemalist notions of civil society in charity+aid provision.

The org was born as “Society for Aiding the Wounded and Ailing Ottoman Soldiers” in 1868. And later in 1947, Mustafa Kemal changed its name to Kizilay, as we know it today. kizilay.org.tr/about-us/histo…

The AKP’s “streamlining” of Kizilay meant inserting AKP-loyal cadres and firing Kemalists whose views did not align with visions brought forth by AKP loyalists. This meant a huge brain drain from an org otherwise highly esteemed for its operational capacity in disaster zones.

Turkish Red Crescent has since been embroiled in countless corruption scandals with close ties to AKP business cronies and Islamist charities like the controversial Ensar Foundation.
⁃arabnews.com/node/1621166/%…
⁃dokuz8haber.net/former-akp-dep…

TIKA was instrumentalised similarly to fit with the AKP’s foreign policy objectives. Better explained by Erman Akilli, Bengu Celenk in “TİKA’s Soft Power: Nation Branding in Turkish Foreign Policy” found at jstor.org/stable/2677610…

With Kizilay in its ideological orbit, AKP’s growing patchwork of AKP-oriented charitable foundations also enabled AKP to compete in the domestic grass roots power politics dominated by the Gülen movement.

This was unfolding against the backdrop of a shrinking space for civil society in Turkey. The govt’s threat perception affects how it categorises civil society. Not as a bottom-up force for good, but as a potential grass-roots fifth column.
carnegieeurope.eu/2022/11/30/lim…

In 2009, the AKP govt created AFAD as a patchwork between the MFA (traditionally a strong player in the intra-governmental power loop) and Prime Min’s Office in an effort to wrestle control away from MFA and tie this important portfolio closer to the PM and later the Presidency.

Like before, this meant placing AKP-loyal cadres at the helm of the organization. This is why, currently, AFAD’s Disaster Response General Manager is a graduate of religious schooling with no relevant experience. Let that sink in.

https://twitter.com/DrGunerman/status/1623106629439717376?s=20

Turkish political discourse has historically gravitated towards centralisation in its efforts to govern. Keeping things tied to one leader has also been the AKP’s go-to remedy for the perceived ailments of Turkey’s political scene.

This line of thinking is reproduced by its bureaucratic oligarchy. Even in aid agencies. This explains why all quake relief coordination now happens thru AFAD. This is Murat Kurum, Turkey's Minister for Environment and City Planning with the statement.

https://twitter.com/Haber/status/1622876706653569026?s=20&t=ogmYsfxINvV6jyKqKgBdRw

But centralisation is bad in disaster mangement. That’s Intro Course 101. Coordination may be centralised, but top-down implemenation stymies response effectiveness. Local units should be mandated to act according to local needs. This is not happening in Turkey.

Why?

One factor is the removal of publicly elected mayors in the affected cities. Erdogan introduced the practice of removing elected mayors from office in 2016. Together with MHP, govt replaced 90 of the 102 HDP mayors with trustees. More have followed.

Elected mayors have a patronage network and political clout in local communities needed in coordinating and implementing aid provision, rescue coordination and crisis management. Govt-appointed trustees do not have this legitimacy. This is hampering efforts of rescue workers.

So. This was longer than expected. We’ve talked about the paradox between Turkey’s role as a humanitarian aid provider internationally and the rescue agencies lacking professionalism and efficacy in handling its current mission.

Many other factors play in: The horrid conditions of building, negligent city planning and a host of other issues that we’ve seen covered in the past 60hrs. This organisational perspective lacked.

Thanks for reading. End.

Well this blew up. Thank you for engaging and sharing.