| The disaster highlighted the corruption and authoritarianism of President Erdoğan. Can he finally be defeated?  Photograph by Devin Oktar Yalkin for The New Yorker An earthquake is most often understood as a sudden natural disaster, an act of God. But as Suzy Hansen reveals in a gripping investigation in this week’s issue, the disastrous impact of the 7.8-magnitude earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria on February 6th was, in large part, the result of decisions made by men, some of which played out over decades. In Turkey, fifty thousand people have been declared dead, but few believe that the figure is accurate—more than a hundred and sixty thousand buildings collapsed, and estimates of the death toll rise to two hundred thousand people. “Some buildings toppled like trees, right off their foundations,” Hansen writes. “Others pancaked straight down. Hospitals, police stations, hotels, churches, and mosques collapsed, roads broke, tunnels cracked.” The scope of the destruction was the result of the earth’s horrible shaking, but also of the choices about where and how these structures were built, and crucially, in many cases, the economic and political corruption behind why they were built in the first place. As Turkey’s President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, stands for reëlection next week, Hansen’s dispatch is essential reading to understand the roots, human costs, and possible ramifications of this decidedly unnatural disaster. Support The New Yorker’s award-winning journalism. Subscribe today » | 
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