“Turkey One Heart” (Türkiye Tek Yürek Kampanyası), a fundraising event on live Turkish television last night (February 15), raised some 115.1 billion Turkish Lira ($6.1 billion USD) for victims of the devastating earthquakes that hit southeastern Turkey last Monday (February 6) and have thus far claimed over 36,000 lives. The live event was attended by celebrities and well known individuals from around Turkey. While successful in raising a large amount of money, “Turkey One Heart” was also criticized as a showy display of government funds, as the vast majority of the donations came from banks, individuals, and companies close to the ruling government.
The event featured many Turkish celebrities working at a phone bank and receiving calls of citizens wishing to make contributions to relief efforts. A text message option allowed viewers to send an SMS to a hotline from which a certain donation amount would be automatically triggered. The campaign received some 9 million SMS messages during Wednesday night’s broadcast. The money raised by the campaign will be donated to the Turkish Red Crescent (Kızılay) and AFAD, Turkey’s disaster response ministry. In the days following the quake, many have expressed frustration with AFAD’s lackluster response to the disaster.
The event also received heavy criticism from opposition leaders, many viewers, and commentators who derided the campaign as a showy display in which funds were transferred from one government bank account to another. Some three quarters of the 115.1 billion Turkish Liras raised came from either banks or organizations controlled by or with close ties to the ruling government. Turkey’s central bank, for example, made a donation of 30 millions Liras during the live broadcast. Journalist and occasional Medyascope contributor Murat Yetkin wrote in a commentary piece on Thursday morning regarding this donation: “Has the government simply taken the money out of one pocket and put it into another?” Ziraat Bank, Halkbank, and Vakıfbank are other government-affiliated banks who also made major donations during last night’s broadcast. Some 57.5 billion Liras, nearly half the total amount raised, was contributed by the Turkey Wealth Fund (Türkiye Varlık Fonu). The contributions of Ziraat, Vakıf, and Halk Banks were criticized because of the vast sums each of the banks have recently received from the Turkish Treasury as capital support. Last night’s 20 billion Lira contribution from Ziraat Bank, for example, was less than the 22.5 billion Lira in additional capital it received from the treasury early last year.
Republican People’s Party (CHP) chairman and main opposition leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu also criticized the event, specifically the participation of the five Turkish construction conglomerates known as the “Gang of Five” (Beşli Çete) with close ties to the ruling government. Kılıçdaroğlu has been a perennial critic of the so-called Gang of Five, who routinely succeed in winning Turkey’s largest construction tenders, allegedly due to their close ties to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s regime. In a post, the CHP Chairman wrote: “Dear Gang of Five, your fundraiser performance tonight brought tears to my eyes. Be sure to keep the receipts; I will deduct them from your $418 billion debt,” referencing the allegation that the group of holding companies has siphoned off hundreds of millions of dollars of Turkish state money. On Thursday morning, news came out that one member of the so-called gang, Cengiz Holding, had been given an investment incentive for a new project in the Konya province. The conglomerate’s owner Mehmet Cengiz had contributed 3 billion Liras to the fundraiser on Wednesday evening. The investment incentives given to Cengiz’s firm this morning include tax exemptions, customs exemptions, as well as personel, insurance, and energy subsidies that critics say well exceeds the businessman’s charitable donation to “Turkey One Heart”.
Despite his criticisms of the Gang of Five’s participation in the “Turkey One Heart”, Kılıçdaroğlu himself made a donation, contributing the amount of a single paycheck to the fundraiser. Other prominent Turkish politicians such as İYİ Party chairwoman Meral Akşener, DEVA Party chairman Ali Babacan, Democrat Party chairman Gültekin Uysal, former minister of finance Mehmet Şimşek, former Prime Minister Tanşu Çiller, Zafer Party chairman Ümit Özdağ, and Memleket Party chairman Muharrem İnce also made donations at the event.
Another moment in Wednesday night’s fundraising event that received broad criticism was a graphic that appeared displaying the names of the individuals who had survived the longest periods of time under rubble following the quake. Also including survivors of other earthquake events throughout Turkish history, the feature was criticized for its tastelessness. In another awkward moment during the broadcast, host Acun Ilıcalı encouraged donors to up the ante by paying more than they had pledged initially.
In a broadcast addressing the live fundraising event, Medyascope Editor-in-Chief Ruşen Çakır criticized the performative aspect of the campaign, saying “A lot of this is money that the government already had, that could have been donated without the show of a big television broadcast…Some of the big businessmen who’ve donated are attempting to vindicate themselves by making donations in front of everybody’s eyes. Although the money that has been raised is significant, but the way the fundraiser was conducted in a showy way meant to attract attention has a repulsive side to it.”
