Türkiye has spent tens of billions of dollars to repair infrastructure and rebuild hundreds of thousands of homes razed in the country's catastrophic earthquakes a year ago. And it is set to inject much more as it seeks to bring the southeastern region back to its feet.
Tuesday marked the first anniversary of what Türkiye calls the "Disaster of the Century," which claimed more than 53,000 lives and flattened towns and swathes of city centers across a region the size of Belgium and the Netherlands combined.
Some 680,000 homes either collapsed or were left too damaged to live in, according to the latest government figures released on Friday by Environment and Urbanization Minister Mehmet Özhaseki. The quakes displaced some 3 million people and 11 provinces were declared emergency zones.
The World Bank estimated the damage caused at $34.2 billion. However, the cost of rebuilding and the impact on the economy was much greater – more than $100 billion, reaffirmed by a report of the Economic Policy Research Foundation of Türkiye (TEPAV) on Tuesday.
The Presidency's Strategy and Budget Directorate put the cost at around $104 billion, a figure also put forth by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
The most significant portion of the damage, around $57 billion, occurred in housing. The government has already started delivering new homes to survivors and pledged to complete 390,000 houses in the first phase.
Public infrastructure and service buildings incurred $13 billion in damage, while private sector losses excluding housing amounted to $12 billion, TEPAV report said, citing the directorate's figures.
Quake-related expenditures reached TL 950 billion ($31.09 billion), or 3.7% of the national income, as of the end of 2023, Treasury and Finance Minister Mehmet Şimşek said last month.
The government's medium-term program, unveiled in September, estimates earthquake-related budget allocations to be 2.5% of the gross domestic product (GDP) this year, 0.9% in 2025, and 0.8% in 2026.
Over the four-year period, the expenditures are expected to amount to approximately 8% of the national income.
Exports from the affected regions plummeted by 13% in 2023 compared to the previous year, the TEPAV report said.
The most significant declines were observed in Osmaniye by 53%, Adıyaman and Kahramanmaraş by 30% each, and Hatay by 28%.
The decrease played a role in limiting Türkiye's overall export growth to just 1% in 2023.
The disaster led to substantial job losses and high unemployment rates in the affected regions, despite significant migration out of the area.
According to Türkiye's employment agency Işkur, unemployment allowance applications increased by 83% in Hatay, 50% in Adıyaman, 46% in Kahramanmaraş and 40% in Malatya during the January-November 2023 period.
The 11 provinces are known as vital agricultural regions. The disaster affected 15.73 million people and more than 20% of the country’s food production, according to the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
The region, known as Türkiye’s “fertile crescent,” accounted for nearly 15% of the agricultural gross domestic product and contributed to almost 20% of the country’s agrifood exports.
In the energy sector alone, the disaster incurred nearly $600 million in damage, according to Elvan Tuğsuz Güven, the head of the Hydroelectric Power Industrialists Association (HESIAD).
Güven stated that efforts to repair the damage to both public and private sector energy infrastructure were ongoing. She highlighted that the reconstruction costs were expected to surpass the estimated damage amount.
"It is estimated that a total of $595.5 million in damage occurred in the energy sector in the earthquake-stricken region, with $123 million belonging to the public sector and $472.5 million to the private sector," Güven told Anadolu Agency (AA).
Some of the over 100 dams in the region had suffered damage or developed minor cracks, although there were no reports of water leakage, she noted. Precautions were taken, including lowering water levels as a preventive measure due to wear on the dam structure.
Güven said efforts to address the damage to the energy infrastructure of both the public and private sectors are still ongoing.
She also stressed the need for future energy infrastructure projects in potential disaster zones to consider seismic vulnerabilities and distances from fault lines.
"It is crucial to implement a new approach to the energy infrastructure that encompasses resilience to future disasters, energy efficiency, and adaptation to climate change."
Güven also provided insight into the significance of the region's energy production before the earthquakes.
As of the end of 2022, the total installed electricity generation capacity in the 11 provinces was 24,476 megawatts, constituting 23.6% of Türkiye's total installed capacity.
The region is home to 142 hydroelectric power plants, featuring a total installed capacity of 12,339 megawatts.
"(Some) 19% of the total number of dams in Türkiye and 39% of the hydroelectric installed capacity are located in the disaster zone," said Güven.
"Approximately 26 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity are produced annually from hydroelectric power plants in the region, accounting for approximately 40% of Türkiye's hydroelectric production."
The length of the electricity transmission lines in the 11 provinces totaled 10,646 kilometers (6,615.12 miles), accounting for 14% of Türkiye's total.
