MUST-READS

• Turkey’s Presidential Election in the Shadow of Devastating Earthquakes

  Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) rose to power on the heels of the earlier calamity, which revealed incapacitated state institutions and widespread corruption led by the Turkish military elite and their cronies—also the root causes of the 2001 financial crisis that led to the collapse of the country’s entire banking system. Increasing public demand for reforms then created a political opportunity for the newly-founded AKP, which succeeded in coming to power in 2002 with major promises of financial reforms and better governance.

• Saudi Arabia’s search and rescue team completes operations in quake-hit Turkey

  Saudi Arabia’s Search and Rescue Team has completed its operation in Turkey after a devastating earthquake hit the country and bordering Syria earlier this month, the Saudi Press Agency (SPA) reported on Thursday. The Saudi team – part of the Kingdom’s Civil Defense team – launched round-the-clock missions in 47 different sites across three Turkish cities to locate survivors who may be trapped under the rubble of collapsed buildings.

• Saudi campaign’s donations to relief Turkey and Syria exceed above $117 million

  The total amount of the Saudi popular campaign’ donations to relief the earthquake-affected people in Turkey and Syria has reached more than SR440 million. Sixteen days after the King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center (KSRelief) launched the campaign through the Sahem platform, the number of donors who donated in the campaign reached about 1.8 million.

• Why Turkey’s earthquake is a grim wake-up call for the Middle East

  While earthquakes are natural and inevitable in a seismically active region, the resulting disasters are largely man-made. Suffering and destruction can be largely reduced or alleviated through resilient construction practices. A promising example is the mud-brick houses built to house internally displaced persons in northwestern Syria. In one such village housing around 500 families, or 2,600 residents, there were no casualties resulting from the earthquake, despite the village’s location in the affected areas.

• Fresh quake hits Turkey-Syria border area two weeks after disaster

  Another earthquake struck the border region of Turkey and Syria on Monday, just two weeks after the area was devastated by a larger quake which killed more than 47,000 people and damaged or destroyed hundreds of thousands of homes. Monday's quake, this time with a magnitude of 6.3, was centred near the southern Turkish city of Antakya and was felt in Syria, Egypt and Lebanon.

• How the Turkey earthquake tore a 300-kilometre rupture in the Earth’s surface

  “These were very large and powerful earthquakes that ruptured all the way up to the surface over a long series of fault segments,” Eric Fielding, a geophysicist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in a statement on the agency’s Earth Observatory website. “This generated extremely strong shaking over a very large area that hit many cities and towns full of people,” he said. “The rupture length and magnitude of the magnitude 7.8 earthquake was similar to the 1906 earthquake that destroyed San Francisco.”

• Muslims Rush to Aid Turkey, Syria

  An online donation campaign launched by Saudi Arabia has raised more than $100 million from over 1.6 million individuals and companies in just over a week. The Saudi government has also delivered planes loaded with food, medicine and shelter supplies, and has deployed search and rescue teams, according to the kingdom’s relief agency. Other wealthy Arab kingdoms responded similarly. Only a day after the quake, the United Arab Emirates announced $100 million in humanitarian assistance for some of the millions of people displaced in Turkey and Syria amid punishing low temperatures.

  • Siasat - Saudi to construct 3,000 buildings for earthquake victims in Turkey, Syria
• Turkey promises swift reconstruction after earthquake, Syrians seek aid

  Turkey said it would demolish buildings heavily damaged by a huge earthquake last week and swiftly start a mammoth reconstruction effort, with thousands of families struggling to survive amid the rubble and freezing conditions. Rescuers, who flew in to save people trapped in the debris, were starting to pack, although one woman was pulled out of a collapsed building on Wednesday after being buried for 222 hours.

• Already vulnerable, Turkey’s economy now faces massive earthquake recovery costs

  The government managed to escape a looming currency crisis through these policies and changes in the international environment. The underlying problems facing the Turkish economy have not been addressed or even definitely delayed though. The economy remains highly vulnerable to external financial shocks or worsening domestic expectations. The recent earthquakes are only likely to exacerbate these issues.

• Earthquake fans anti-Syrian sentiment in Turkey amid desperate conditions

  The devastating earthquake to hit Turkey and Syria has fanned resentment among some Turks towards the millions of Syrian refugees in the country who are being blamed anecdotally by some for looting amid the destruction and chaos. Several Turks in quake-hit towns and cities have accused Syrians of robbing damaged shops and homes. Anti-Syrian slogans such as "We don't want Syrians," "Immigrants should be deported," and "No longer welcome" trended on Twitter.

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