Turkey’s rebuilding goes on two years after devastating quakes

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• At least $85bn of damage
• Still restoring basic services
• Significant housing shortage

Two years since twin earthquakes devastated much of Turkey’s southern region, the country is still picking up the pieces.

Fewer than one-third of the 680,000 homes lost have been rebuilt so far and 600,000 people are still living in converted shipping containers.

More than 53,000 people lost their lives in the February 6 earthquakes, which also destroyed much of the housing, infrastructure and economic capacity of the 11 most affected provinces, at a cost of at least $85 billion, according to the government. 

Another $20 billion has been lost on a sharp fall in economic output in the region. North-western Syria was also hit by the earthquakes.

A year after first speaking to AGBI, Abdülkadir Çelenk, president of the Adıyaman Organized Industrial Zone in the earthquake-hit province by the same name, says some progress has been made towards recovery but major challenges remain.

“Our biggest problem is still the lack of workforce,” he tells AGBI.

“There are still many people here living in containers and there is some state housing agency accommodation being handed out, but this is slow and without accommodation rebuilding your workforce is hard.” 

Tens of thousands of people who left the region after the earthquake have yet to return, in part because accommodation is limited, Çelenk says.

Both Turkey and Greece have experienced a spike in seismic activity in the Aegean region. More than 750 tremors have been recorded since January 28, prompting emergency services teams in both countries to be put on alert. 

On January 25 President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced that, to date, 201,000 housing units have been built and handed over. The government is aiming to double this number this year. 

Even if the target is achieved, however, the total will still be well short of the 680,000 homes lost in the earthquakes, and many thousands of people are still spending winter months in emergency accommodation.

“It will take five to six years to get back to where we were before”, Çelenk says. 

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Another factor slowing recovery is competing demands for labour and material. In January the government announced a scheme to provide 250,000 new residential units for low-income earners, over and above its earthquake-related commitments. 

Turkey is also seeking to address earthquake risks in other parts of the country, with the economic capital – Istanbul – at the centre of its calculations.

New data from the Ministry for Environment, Urbanisation and Climate Change show that more than 1.5 million of Istanbul’s 7.5 million buildings are at high risk in the event of a major earthquake, and 600,000 are rated as in danger of immediate collapse. 

Along with the potential loss of life among the 15 million people who live in the city and its surroundings, the economic fallout from a severe earthquake would be huge.

Istanbul alone accounts for almost one-third of national GDP, while the neighbouring provinces of Bursa and Kocaeli – home to much of the country’s automotive industry – take the total to around 40 percent.

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To address this risk, the government has been encouraging building owners to renovate their properties, providing some financial support to help fund work to reinforce at-risk structures, although this process is expected to take decades to be completed.

The competing demands for labour, equipment and materials across the country have also inflated costs in the region affected by the 2023 earthquakes, at times well above the national average, according to Hikme Çinçin, board chairman of the Antakya Chamber of Commerce and Industry in the southern province of Hatay.

“Construction material prices have reached exorbitant levels due to opportunism,” he says.

“As of January, the current price for a cubic metre of ready-mixed concrete in Hatay is around TL3600 ($100), including VAT, while the same product is around TL2820 ($78.40) in (the capital) Ankara.” 

Alattin Pektaş, a former businessman and now a resident in a container city in Adıyaman, says that small businesses in the city – its “beating heart” – have yet to resume in any meaningful numbers. 

“Many of my relatives had small businesses, independent work from architecture to jewellery, insurance to pharmacies,” says Pektaş, who lost 70 family members in the earthquakes.

“The rebuilding on site is happening, but even those businesses that survived are gone. To return to normality, to have us heal, to have the heart of the city beat normally again, will take much longer.”