A board bearing the party logo and "AK parti" was propped against the broken glass door. Office furniture was piled high, evidence of a cleanup after two powerful quakes shook the city and much of south-east Turkey, jolting an area considered a bedrock of support for the AKP.
Nearby residents said they had seen little of the local AKP officials after the disaster. "They escaped!" joked Mehmet, who declined to give his full name, perched on a sofa inside a furniture and homewares shop. Sparkling pots and pans sat next to new fridges, destined for the homes of people trying to rebuild their lives in an area where the cemetery had been enlarged to accommodate thousands of bodies after the quakes.
"We reopened this shop a week after the earthquakes, and we haven't seen them since," Mehmet said. "This city is the AKP's castle but I haven't seen any of them around here, not even next to the rubble."
Denne historien er fra May 12, 2023-utgaven av The Guardian Weekly.
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Denne historien er fra May 12, 2023-utgaven av The Guardian Weekly.
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Finn family murals
The optimism that runs through Finnish artist Tove Jansson's Moomin stories also appears in her public works, now on show in a Helsinki exhibition
I hoped Finland would be a progressive dream.I've had to think again Mike Watson
Oulu is five hours north from Helsinki by train and a good deal colder and darker each winter than the Finnish capital. From November to March its 220,000 residents are lucky to see daylight for a couple of hours a day and temperatures can reach the minus 30s. However, this is not the reason I sense a darkening of the Finnish dream that brought me here six years ago.
A surplus of billionaires is destabilising our democracies Zoe Williams
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'What will people think? I don't care any more'
At 90, Alan Bennett has written a sex-fuelled novella set in a home for the elderly. He talks about mourning Maggie Smith, turning down a knighthood and what he makes of the new UK prime minister
I see you
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Rumbled How Ali ran rings around apartheid, 50 years ago
Fifty years ago, in a corner of white South Africa, Muhammad Ali already seemed a miracle-maker.
Trudeau faces 'iceberg revolt'as calls grow for PM to quit
Justin Trudeau, who promised “sunny ways” as he won an election on a wave of public fatigue with an incumbent Conservative government, is now facing his darkest and most uncertain political moment as he attempts to defy the odds to win a rare fourth term.
Lost Maya city revealed through laser mapping
After swapping machetes and binoculars for computer screens and laser mapping, a team of researchers have discovered a lost Maya city containing temple pyramids, enclosed plazas and a reservoir which had been hidden for centuries by the Mexican jungle.
'A civil war' Gangs step up assault on capital
Armed fighters advance into neighbourhoods at the heart of Port-au-Prince as authorities try to restore order
Reality bites in the Himalayan 'kingdom of happiness'
High emigration and youth unemployment levels belie the mountain nation's global reputation for cheeriness
