The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - Earthquakes Wreak Havoc in Turkey and Syria

Episode Date: February 7, 2023

In the early hours of Monday, Feb. 6th, an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.8 hit the city of Gaziantep in southern Turkey. The quake was felt across Turkey and deep into Syria, leaving behind a path of deadly destruction.Full Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/zeihan/earthquakes-wreak-havoc-on-turkey-and-syria

Hey everyone, Peter Zine here coming to you from somewhere in Florida. On Monday, the 6th of February in the early hours, an earthquake hit the city of Gazantep in south central Turkey, which is hard up on the Syrian border. And the destructive capacity, if it was 7.8 on the Richter scale, was felt as far away as Hote, which is where the Turkish territory meets the Mediterranean, as well as well into Turkish Kurdistan, and, of course, throughout most of Syria. Devastation is considerable. This is definitely the strongest earthquake that has hit the area in about 20 years.

Early death estimates are already well over 2,000. They'll probably be over 20,000 within a week. When earthquake hit this area, they can really be awful. We are in a very seismically active area here, and a lot of the construction is not up. We would consider up to, say, Japanese-style standards. So the idea that you could actually reach 100,000 deaths is not out of the ballpark. Earthquakes are often geopolitical events, not in that they wreck countries, although that they do,

but instead they provide opportunities for diplomatic breakthroughs. And as regards Turkey at this moment, there's really two countries that would be really, really looking to provide some aid in order to tilt politics in Turkey in their direction. The first one would be Russia. Turkey is one of the very few outlets that the Russians have right now for getting their trade in and out, and the Turks have been acting as middlemen. So if the Russians were able to provide some sort of diplomatic and economic emergency assistance, bridge building, relief crews, that sort of thing, then you could see some significant warming in relations. The problem, of course, is that all the Russians' capacity has already spoken for in Ukraine,

and it's not clear that it would be worth the Russians' time to pull few people off of the front lines in order to give supply to the Turks. The Russians have something that's called the Disasters Ministry, which is actually really good at doing stuff like this. It used to be run by Shoegu, who is the current defense minister, but it's really just a paramilitary arm of the government, and it's just completely spoken for already. The second group that would have an interest of me tilting things diplomatically with the Turks would be the Swedes. The Swedes have been trying to get into NATO for about a year now, and the Turks have been threatening a veto of her membership because of the Swedes taking a certain position on Kurdish issues

what the Turks think is Anthemah to them being in alliance. But if Sweden, which does have some spare capacity and does have a good record of humanitarian effort, even with the Kurds, we're to provide that with the Turks, it might just provide the sort of opening that the Swedes need to get over Turkish hesitants in terms of letting them join the alliance. So those are the two to watch for.

You won't have to wait very long. This is the kind of thing that either happens or it doesn't within just a couple of days because after that Too late and the people buried in another rubble are already gone. So we'll know soon. That's it for me until next time