Laissez-Faire Laissez-Mourir: Earthquake on 6 February 2023 and Capitalism That Discards and Disassociates Citizens in Erdogan’s Turkey
Laissez-Faire Laissez-Mourir: Earthquake on 6 February 2023 and Capitalism That Discards and Disassociates Citizens in Erdogan’s Turkey

Author(s): Kumru Toktamış
Subject(s): Electoral systems, Economic development, Environmental interactions
Published by: Transnational Press London
Keywords: Laissez-Faire; Laissez-Mourir; earthquake; february; capitalism; discards; disassociates; citizens; Erdogan; Turkey;
Summary/Abstract: In 2023, the 6 February earthquakes in Turkey (and Syria) revealed the structural processes of a regime that treats its citizens as disposable and discardable. Paradoxically, this revelation did not find its political expression in the form of an opposition. Since the Enlightenment, many perspectives, including most recently the Discard Studies, seek to explain under what circumstances citizens become undervalued. It is not as simple, however, to explain how survivors of human-made disasters can disassociate themselves from causes and continue to support their own devaluation. The power of a hegemonic discourse that celebrates death as a desirable outcome provides a suitable language and understanding to maintain a political and economic regime that undermine the role of human agency in disaster and thus creates profitable opportunities to those who control power and resources.

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