After historic fires, Turkey is now affected by floods of unprecedented magnitude in decades, which have killed at least 38 people in the north of the country.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited the site on Friday August 14 to pledge the necessary support to the victims.

According to a provisional report from the Government Agency for Natural Disaster Management (Afad), 32 people died in the province of Kastamonu, located on the shores of the Black Sea, and six in the neighboring province of Sinop.

An unknown number of people are also missing.

The floods, caused by heavy rainfall overnight Tuesday through Wednesday, came at a time when Turkey was just recovering from large fires that left eight people dead and ravaged southern tourist areas.

>> Europe, Siberia, United States… A summer marked by historic fires

For many experts, natural disasters like the ones that follow one another in this country are likely to become more frequent and more violent due to global warming caused by human activity.

As a sign of the gravity of the situation, President Erdogan went to one of the areas hardest hit by the floods, the district of Bozkurt, in the province of Kastamonu, on Friday, where an eight-story apartment building collapsed. .

"Your pain is our pain to all. The State stands by your side with all its means," said Recep Tayyip Erdogan, before attending the funerals of the victims.

"Never in my life had I seen such a thing"

Shocked, some survivors began to express their anger against the local authorities, accusing them of not having reacted quickly enough to bring the population to safety.

"We were only told to put our vehicles to safety, because the river was in danger of overflowing. We were not told to save our lives or those of our children," lamented Arzu Yücel, whose two twin daughters and the in-laws disappeared after their building collapsed.

"If we had been warned, we would have left in less than five minutes (...) We were not asked to evacuate," she added, sobbing, quoted by the DHA news agency.

As a result of heavy precipitation, in some cities, the water reached up to four meters in height, according to the authorities, and the streets of entire cities turned into torrents carrying cars and all manner of debris.

Adem Senol, 75, saw water surrounding his house in Bartin province in a few minutes.

"Never in my life had I seen such a thing," he told state news agency Anadolu.

"The water rose higher than our windows, broke our door and even the wall of our garden," he added.

"This is the worst flood that I have ever seen," Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu said Thursday, during a trip to the disaster areas.

Erdogan under pressure

Faced with the rising waters, the emergency services had to evacuate 45 patients from a hospital in the coastal region of Sinop.

Images broadcast on television and on social media showed villagers taking refuge on the roofs of their homes being evacuated by helicopter.

Several road bridges also collapsed after landslides.

Nearly 200 villages were still without electricity on Friday, authorities said.

Meteorological services forecast continued precipitation over the affected areas for the remainder of the week.

The Turkish regions bordering the Black Sea are frequently prey to flooding.

Last month, six people died in Rize, in the northeast.

After the repeated natural disasters that have hit Turkey, several politicians and associations have increased the pressure on Recep Tayyip Erdogan to take radical measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Turkey is one of the few countries that did not adopt the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

>> Fires: #HelpTurkey, the hashtag that annoys Recep Tayyip Erdogan

With two years of elections which are already promising to be difficult for President Erdogan against the backdrop of economic problems, these natural disasters constitute a political issue.

During a trip to regions affected by fires at the end of July, the Turkish president sparked an outcry by throwing packets of tea from the roof of a bus to the survivors, his detractors having seen it as a sign of a lack of 'empathy.

With AFP

The summary of the week

France 24 invites you to come back to the news that marked the week

I subscribe

Take international news everywhere with you!

Download the France 24 application

google-play-badge_FR