Jan 30, 2020

A deadly earthquake in eastern Turkey has rekindled questions about how the government spends billions of liras in “quake taxes” in a country crisscrossed by fault lines and whose biggest city, Istanbul, is said to be at risk for a major tremor.

The 6.8 magnitude Jan. 24 quake, centered on the town of Sivrice in Elazig province, claimed more than 40 lives in the region. Since then, other tremors have jolted western Turkey, fanning misgivings on how much headway the country has made in quake precautions since 1999, when two massive tremors hit the industrialized northwest three months apart, killing some 20,000 people in several provinces, including Istanbul.

Despite a history of devastating quakes, Turkey has been notorious for shoddy construction and little preparedness for seismic and other natural disasters. Turkey ranks third in the world in terms of quake-related casualties and eighth in terms of the total number of people affected, according to the country’s disaster and emergency management agency AFAD. About 70% of Turkey’s territory is in earthquake belts, marked by three major fault lines, known as the North, East and West Anatolian faults. Some 14,000 earthquakes, measuring from 4.0 to 7.9 magnitude, have hit the country since the beginning of the 20th century, claiming about 87,000 lives and destroying more than 600,000 buildings, AFAD data show. This means an average of two tremors with deadly casualties or material damage per year.

Such a high risk requires utmost preparedness, especially in terms of quake-proofing homes, infrastructure and the entire building stock. Japan is known as a prime example in this respect. Turkey, for its part, has a long way to go, despite the disasters it has experienced over the years. The housing stock of low- and middle-income groups in particular is known to be at serious risk. Fears are rife that Istanbul, a sprawling city of more than 15 million, could face colossal damage when “the big one” strikes. Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said last week that authorities were preparing for a scenario of a 7.5 magnitude quake hitting the city, which is Turkey’s industrial and financial hub. Experts say Istanbul could be due for a major quake — its last major one was in 1894.

After the 1999 disaster, temporary new taxes were introduced to back relief and reconstruction efforts, which came to be known as “quake taxes.” By 2003, those tax revenues amounted to 7.3 billion Turkish liras ($1.2 billion at the current exchange rate). Yet the money was not collected in a special fund, but went to the government budget, along with regular tax revenues. The most prominent of those taxes — the special communication tax levied on mobile telephone bills — was made permanent in 2003, the first full year in power of the ruling Justice and Development Party. By 2020, revenues from the special communication tax totaled 68 billion liras (some $11.5 billion). Revenues from the “quake taxes” introduced after the 1999 disaster have totaled nearly 73 billion liras ($12.3 billion) over two decades.