‘When you are being governed by authoritarian govt, voting for opposition is very risky endeavour’

Millions of people across Turkey on Tuesday mourned the loss of more than 53,000 friends, loved ones and neighbors in the country’s catastrophic earthquake a year ago. To mark what it calls the “Disaster of the Century,” the government arranged a series of events to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the disaster in southern Turkey. In Antakya, the capital of the southern province of Hatay, angry crowds jostled with police as officials were led to the commemorations. Mayor Lutfu Savas was greeted with chants calling for him to resign, while Health Minister Fahrettin Koca was jeered and booed as he gave a speech. Amid the fog by the Orontes River, people chanted “Can anyone hear me?” — echoing the voices of those buried under the rubble a year ago — and ”We won’t forget, we won’t forgive.” “Some of us were buried alive,” said Mustafa Bahadirli, a 24-year-old in Antakya. “We called our government ‘father’ but the government left us without a father. We were abandoned for days and are still abandoned.” As Turkey mourns tens of thousands dead, surrounded by the ruins of last year’s earthquake, FRANCE 24’s Angela Diffley is joined by Berk Esen, Professor of Political Science & International Relations at Sabancı University in İstanbul.