Corruption Kills

How Turkey became a deathtrap

On Tuesday, Rob Tracinski interviewed me for his Symposium podcast. We spoke about the earthquake in Turkey.

Watching the interview, I was surprised to see how much emotion was on my face. I was striving for a cool, analytic, professional tone. I thought that was what I had achieved. But I’m much more of an open book than I’d realized. There’s nothing wrong with that. My emotions are appropriate to the horror. I’m just surprised that I’m so incapable of concealing what I feel.

Before we spoke, knowing that Rob wanted to discuss the political circumstances that permitted this to happen, I sent him an article I wrote in 2008 about Turkish corruption. I think it’s one of the most useful and comprehensive pieces I published during the years I lived there. You can no longer read it on the web because the magazine for which I wrote it went under.¹

I think this article will give you a better sense of exactly how this happened than anything I could write now, so I’ve republished it below and updated it, where necessary, in the footnotes.

While this is about Turkey, specifically, as Rob points out in our discussion, the lessons are much broader.

Corruption kills.