THE TREMOR THAT CHANGES EVERYTHING

Gudrun Harrer and Walter Posch in dialogue

THE TREMOR THAT CHANGES EVERYTHING
Turkey and Syria - the possible political consequences

Monday, 6 February 2023, will be sadly remembered as a day of disaster in Turkey and Syria. The full extent of the earthquake that shook south-east Turkey and the Turkish-Syrian border region cannot yet be foreseen. Tens of thousands of fatalities, wounded people whose care will overwhelm Turkey and Syria, human suffering and destruction that will characterise the region for a long time to come. After the disaster, nothing will ever be the same again.

The earthquake will also cause political upheaval. At the moment, there is not only the question of the elections in Turkey, but also the question of how the Turkish presence, the interventions against left-wing Kurds, will continue in Syria. In the civil war-torn country, earthquake relief is being massively hampered by internal divisions. The province of Idlib in particular, which is the only area still held by non-Kurdish rebels, remained unsupplied for a long time.

Gudrun Harrer and Walter Posch talk about the possible political and geopolitical consequences.

Walter Posch, Institute for Peace Research and Conflict Management (IFK) at the National Defence Academy.
Gudrun Harrer, Senior Editor, Der Standard; Lecturer in Modern History and Politics of the Middle East at the University of Vienna and the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna