ISTANBUL: Flash floods killed 13 people living in tents and container housing set up across Turkiye’s quake-hit region on Wednesday, piling more pressure on President Recep Tayyip Erdogan before crunch elections.

Several more people were swept away by the rushing water, which turned streets into muddy rivers in areas hit by last month’s 7.8-magnitude quake. More than 48,000 people died in Turkiye and nearly 6,000 in Syria in the Feb 6 disaster, the region’s deadliest in modern times.

Hundreds of thousands of Turkish quake survivors have been moved into tents and container homes across the disaster region, which covers 11 provinces across Turkiye’s south-east.

Turkish media said the floods killed 11 people in Sanliurfa, 50 kilometres north of the Syrian border.

Two people also died in nearby Adiyaman, including a one-year-old.

Images showed the waters sweeping away cars and flooding temporary housing set up for earthquake victims.

The Sanliurfa governor’s office said the flooding also reached the ground floor of one of the region’s main hospitals.

Pressure on Erdogan

Facing a difficult re-election on May 14, Erdogan is confronting a furious backlash over his government’s stuttering response to the biggest natural disaster of his two-decade rule. Erdogan has issued several public apologies while also stressing that no nation could have dealt quickly with a disaster of such scale.

He has spent the past few weeks touring the region, meeting survivors and promising to rebuild the entire area within a year.

Published in Dawn, March 16th, 2023