Turkish earthquake

Turkey’s second major earthquake of the year has now claimed at least 575 lives.   It struck the eastern town of Ercis, which has nearly 100,000 inhabitants, on Sunday.   More than 180 people have been pulled from the wreckage, including a 13 year old boy in the early hours of yesterday, but now hopes of finding anyone else alive are fading.

Tens of thousands of people have been made homeless, and the nights are freezing cold.   Most of those living in the region are Kurds – an ethnic minority that has been battling to have its own country - and the Turkish government had been criticised for what some saw as a sluggish initial response. 

I was in Istanbul at the time of the last earthquake in May, which struck the western Kutahya region, about 100 miles away, killing two people.    Some people in Istanbul said they felt the tremor, though I did not.

Perhaps the worst earthquake in Turkey’s history was the one that destroyed the famous city of Antioch in 526, killing up to 300,000 (see my blog of Jan 22, 2010).   The deadliest of recent years was the Izmit quake of 1999, which caused at least 17,000 deaths in the area, about 40 miles from Istanbul.

Iraq - justice for war criminals

While accusations swirl around that the USA turned a blind eye to torture by its Iraqi allies, Saddam Hussein’s former foreign minister, Tariq Aziz, has been sentenced to death by the Iraqi Supreme Court for persecuting Shia Muslim religious parties.

The website Wikileaks has published 400,000 US military logs, which are alleged to demonstrate that Iraqi security forces assaulted detainees with acid and electric drills, beat, mutilated, and summary executed them, and that coalition forces handed prisoners back to them even when there were signs that they had been mistreated.

Tariq Aziz, who spoke good English, was often the front man for Saddam’s regime on Western television. He had already been given prison sentences for his role in the execution of 42 merchants for profiteering and in driving Kurds from their homes.

Aziz, now 74, is reportedly ill after suffering a stroke. He may appeal against the sentence. Two other Saddam aides in the case were also sentenced to death.