The main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) has come under intense criticism for renominating a mayor for the southern province of Hatay who was held partly responsible for the massive destruction in the city in two major earthquakes last year.
Disregarding the criticism, CHP spokesperson Deniz Yücel said on Thursday that the party is determined to put forward current Hatay Mayor Lütfü Savaş as the mayoral candidate in the city for local elections on March 31.
Hatay was one of the more than a dozen cities in Turkey’s south and southeast that were hit by two powerful earthquakes on February 6, with a magnitude of 7.8 and 7.5, claiming the lives of more than 50,000 people and leaving millions of others homeless.
Yücel said withdrawal of Savaş’s mayoral candidacy was out of the question as he spoke to reporters at a press conference at CHP headquarters in Ankara.
“There has been great suffering in Hatay. People have lost their relatives. The CHP and our metropolitan mayor [Savaş] have shown all kinds of self-sacrifice and dedication in healing these wounds and coping with the destruction. He will continue to do that,” Yücel said.
Following the disaster Savaş, whose municipality faced accusations of disregarding safety guidelines when issuing construction licenses in the city, resisted calls for his resignation.
Savaş, who is currently in the CHP, served as mayor of Hatay’s Antakya district between 2009 and 2014 from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). He resigned when the party failed to nominate him as a mayoral candidate for Hatay in the 2014 local elections and joined the CHP. He has been serving as mayor of Hatay from the CHP since 2014 and was re-elected in the local elections of 2019.
Following Savaş’s renomination, CHP leader Özgür Özel’s remarks to a journalist last month in which he implied his objection to Savaş’s renomination were brought up again by media outlets and social media users.
Özel had said at the time that every administrator in the city was responsible for the massive destruction in Hatay and that his party would take the views of the locals into consideration about whom they want to see as their next mayor.
Özel’s remarks were interpreted as his unwillingness to renominate Savaş.
The change in Özel’s view about the mayor’s renomination led many including journalist Metin Cihan to question its possible reasons.
“What makes Savaş so powerful or Özel and his team so weak?” Cihan said, adding that Özel and his team had to bow to pressure from Savaş.
Among other things, Savaş was criticized for standing by a contractor who was detained while trying to flee the country after his luxury buildings collapsed in the February earthquakes.
Rönesans Residence, a luxury complex whose list of celebrity residents included former Ghana international footballer Christian Atsu, became a symbol of building malpractice when it crumbled like a house of cards. Atsu was one of hundreds who died under the rubble of the 12-storey block of flats, built in 2013.
Savaş drew criticism at the time for claiming that the contractor was an “idealist.”
“If we subject the [Hatay] municipality, [and] those who do this job [construction] to excessive questioning, we would be doing them a disservice,” Savaş had said back then.