A Turkish “humanitarian” organization sells tents and relief goods to earthquake victims

As the death toll continues to rise beyond a staggering 44,000 lives from the series of earthquakes that devastated Syria and Turkey and international rescue effort continues to recover the victims, more scandals, ineptitude, and outright failures of the Erdogan administration have continued to emerge. Numerous reports have appeared that reveal how the promises of Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) to launch a rapid reconstruction campaign with new legislation that would mandate construction companies to comply to strict regulations requires buildings to meet new earthquake construction standards played a major role in his 2003 electoral victory following Turkey’s 1999 earthquake that led to the deaths of more than 17,000 people. In the days and weeks following February’s series of earthquakes it became clear that those promises were nothing more than words. Despite
The latest farce in the dismal mismanagement of the continuing crisis came out this week when reports revealed that Turkey’s Red Crescent organization has been selling tents to a Turkish aid organization Ahbap, a non-governmental organization founded by Haluk Levent a Turkish musician and philanthropist whose organization is based on “solidarity and cooperation”.
What was more disturbing about the reported sale in not just that it came from the Turkish Red Crescent, which is part of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement an explicitly nonprofit humanitarian network aimed at providing humanitarian relief to refugees, IDPs and victims of natural disasters, but that the sale took place in the crucial first days following the earthquakes. A look at the Turkish Red Crescent’s home page in the “what we do?” section states that they are committed to providing, presenting and offering various and important services for social solidarity such as shelter and protection to the poor and needy”. A look at the website’s “General Questions” section and the first page of frequently asked questions (F.A.Q.) are all centered on Zakat detailing precisely how much donations should be and implying that they are mandated by faith, nowhere in the FAQ section are there any details on how one could volunteer their time, donate materials or other much needed services. A recent article from Bianet entitled How did the Red Crescent turn into Red Crescent Inc.? Further details how the Turkish Red Crescent allegedly constructed around political links, family ties, connections to pro government media TRT, a company responsible for military construction contracts and a consultant to Roketsan, a Turkish arms company known for producing the MAM-C rockets that arm the Bayraktar TB-2. The article concludes with the revelation that the 2022 general assembly elections saw Naci Yorulmaz, who had objected to the sale of Red Crescent hospitals and properties, removed from the board and Kerem Kınık elected as the head of the institution with a board of AKP members.
A further look into the Turkish Red Crescent’s sale of tents to Ahbap reveals that in the early days of the earthquakes, Twitter became a crucial tool for information sharing and as part of the overall Turkish rescue effort. Within the initial hours following the earthquake a mass trend quickly grew criticizing the state sponsored AFAD organization’s virtual lack of response across the effected areas, overall inaction and in some cases interference with locally organized rescue efforts including blocked the use of much needed privately hired excavators paid for by rapidly organized collective funding. Ahbap’s founder, on the other hand, was on the ground using his Twitter following to live stream video and share real time information from the epicenters of the disaster. Within hours masses of Twitter followers began to call for those willing to donate to give to Ahbap rather as the Turkish state’s AFAD could not be trusted.
Rather than trying to find a means to cooperate or share the critical information that was being shared by Levent’s livestreaming and Ahbab, the Turkish state media opted to attack the founder and his organization presenting opinion as fact in reports discrediting Ahbaps ability to manage donations and alleging that the organization was nowhere to be found in several key sites. The attacks on Ahbab escalated as a Twitter “troll army’ emerged in mass to attack critics of the state sponsored AFAD efforts, those who supported and called for donations to Ahbaps and engaged in a campaign of disinformation aimed at discrediting Levent and Ahbap. The Twitter storm reached its peak when it drew in Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the leader of the CHP-led opposition who tweeted that a “smear campaign’ was being carried out against Levant and Ahbab.

The tensions appeared to have subsided as Levent put out a statement calling for a unified support of both Ahbab and AFAD and to “resist those who want to interrupt our work”. The call was echoed by other Turkish influencers and celebrities and appeared to have cooled the storm, however the fact that such an series of events occurred in the critical first days of the earthquakes have only raise more unanswered questions, claims of corruptions, patronage, mismanagement of funds, resources and taxes that had been collected by Erdogan’s AKP-MHP government since they took power over 20 years ago all aimed at specifically preventing another massive humanitarian crisis such as the 1999 earthquake from happening again. Instead, the aftermath of this disaster from it’s earliest days until nearly a month later has continued to reveal criminal negligence, corruption, ineptitude, patronage at the local, regional and national level with all the evidence pointing to the ruling AKP-MHP coalition and President Erdogan’s failed policies, promises and business as usual, the sale of Red Crescent tents was only the tip of the iceberg in a crises with an appalling ever growing death toll all centered on corporate greed and government collusion.