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Comment by halilb | Hacker News Reader

I live in Turkey and was very close to the earthquake epicenter. I can say that communication in affected cities is very limited and Twitter had a real positive effect on organizing help and reaching out to lots of people in the area.

So blocking Twitter right now is pure evil. They are only interested in the optics and looking strong for the upcoming election and do not care about anything else.

I saw some people waiting for their relatives to get rescued around collapsed buildings dare to say that they haven't received any official help so far in the news. And they said that "government can come and arrest me for saying this - so be it". I don't think the Turkish government is reading HN but still feeling a little bit anxious while posting this after witnessing so many weird things here.

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Do you think it will actually harm Erdogan's support though, anger over blocking twitter?

Is his popular support relevant when he has his hands on the levers of government operations?

I'm curious if Erdogan will attempt an I'm-president-until-I'm-dead move the way Putin and Xi Jinping did.

I think it's probably relevant, yes -- he is in fact fairly popular, historically. (So is Putin). It's harder to keep your hands on the levers of power the less support you have, even if it can still be done with increasing force, it's a threat.

But I'm interested in hearing with Turkish HN users think.

Note that the comment I replied to, from a Turkish user, suggested "They are only interested in the optics and looking strong for the upcoming election", suggesting that, yes, Erdogan cares about popularity.

The upcoming election(on May 14th if it doesn't get postponed due to the earthquake) will be unique across other elections Erdogan participated in over the last 20 years. This was the first election he might actually lose(by a margin of 5-10%) according to election polls before the earthquake.

So he did care about his popularity as he was the most popular one so far. Voters and the system were surely manipulated by the ruling party in the decade but opposing a decisive election result is a new line they haven't crossed yet.

Yes it is relevant. He doesn't have his hands on all the levers yet.

> Anger Over Quake Response Challenges Erdogan Ahead of Election

> A furor is building among some survivors over the government’s handling of the crisis. “I have been voting for this government for 20 years, and I’m telling everyone about my anger,” said one. “I will never forgive them.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/11/world/europe/earthquake-t...

It's a tragedy no nation should face alone. There should be no "looking bad" here, just opportunities to help. Why not embrace that and do whatever you can? Any city would face horrible losses in this situation. Heck, Miami lost half a building on a normal day...

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