PRISON NATION U$A

Changes to Opioid Addiction Treatment in Federal Prisons Threaten Peoples’ Lives

Incarcerated people are reporting that the abrupt changes are wreaking havoc on their health and mental well-being.

By Pam Bailey , 

Truthout

March 26, 2025

Chandler Lackey, 22, writes down an inventory of resentments, a pilot program with a mentor as part of the Substance Treatment Opportunity Program, at the Worcester County Jail and House of Corrections in West Boylston, Massachusetts, on September 23, 2019.David L. Ryan / The Boston Globe via Getty Images

Treatment for those struggling with opioid addiction in the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) is about to get a lot worse, warn a former BOP case manager and a medical professional who recently left the agency.

The BOP directed staff about a month ago to require all participants in medication-assisted treatment (MAT) programs to switch from monthly injections (primarily of buprenorphine, which treats opioid use disorder) to daily strips that are dissolved under the tongue.

The changes further erode the well-being of incarcerated people who struggle with substance use disorder, which the Bureau of Justice Statistics estimates is roughly 47 percent of those held in U.S. jails and prisons. Medical and mental health care in prison is already notoriously poor, and when MAT was first introduced, hopes were high. However, experts warn that the abrupt change in treatment protocol is liable to provoke violence and increase addiction

“Monthly injections are safer for everyone,” says Andrea Brockman, a regional mental health ombudsman for a state correctional system and a clinical psychologist who worked for the BOP for 11 years before joining the team of the federal Prison Education and Reform Alliance (PERA). “It protects participants from being beaten up, or worse, by people who want the oral strips to sell or use.” She warned the change to strips could increase suicides, overdoses and conflict.

Both the formulary and the clinical guidelines for implementation of MAT have been removed from the BOP’s public website, and the agency has not given a reason for this change, says PERA Executive Director Jack Donson, a former BOP case manager. “This lack of transparency is endemic within the BOP right now.”

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BOP Associate Deputy Director Kathleen Toomey told the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies on February 26 that, “While we continue to prioritize hiring, we are making significant changes to reduce costs and maximize our use of existing resources. For example, we reduced all operating budgets by 20 percent…. We’ve saved $10 million by moving to lower-cost drugs where it’s medically appropriate, particularly those for medication-assisted treatment.”

Brockman questions whether strips are indeed “medically appropriate” within a prison setting due to the risk of diversion. An analysis of deaths in federal prison by the U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General found that 20 percent were due to drug overdose.

The BOP did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.
Switching to Strips Provokes Intimidation and Violence

Elain Kay Young, who is incarcerated at FCI Waseca, a low-security federal women’s prison in Minnesota, says there is rampant drug use there.

“We have problems with K2 [a synthetic form of marijuana’s active ingredient] as well, but abuse of the strips is extensive,” she wrote in an email from the prison this month. “People are getting into MAT who do not belong; they are there to get stuff to sell. As a result of these drugs, the women here have bills they cannot begin to pay, and there are constant threats and fights, which endanger everyone. Meanwhile people who really need the MAT program can’t get in, because the prison doesn’t have the proper resources. I know three girls who are desperate to kick [their addiction], but they are stuck on the MAT wait list.”

Such problems could be prevented if the BOP followed the guidelines set out by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. The federal agency recommends dedicated administration rooms where recipients stay until the strips are fully consumed, with accompanying mouth checks. Without these safety measures, the drug can too easily be passed from one person to another via “birding,” a practice in which individuals hide the strips in their cheeks, then regurgitate them into someone else’s mouth.

The staff “does engage in some degree of mouth checks, if you can call [them] that,” says Brockman. “It is a brief mouth-open-tongue-out-and-moved up-and-down thing. But nothing that is adequate. These strips are easy to hide.”

Another problem is the way the BOP is implementing the treatment change. Jason Cooke, who is incarcerated at the federal Atwater penitentiary in California, reported that after two years on the highest-dose, 300-milligram (mg) shot, he was switched to the lowest-dose, 2-mg strip. The retired physician noted that a 2-mg suboxone strip “is quite low when you consider that one injection is equivalent to approximately 16-24 mg a day of the sublingual medication.” After intervention by PERA Executive Director Donson, Cooke was moved up to 8 mg.

“I’m in prison because I was an addict; I robbed pharmacies for Oxycontin, and I was doing an unbelievable amount a day,” Cooke wrote Truthout in an email on January 18. “But I was finally doing good with my injection. Then they took me off, and my whole life changed and now it’s upside down. Are these people trying to make me flip out and start cutting my wrists? Because that’s what’s about to happen. I’m not eating or sleeping. Honestly? I want to kill myself. I’m so tired of feeling this way.”
Inventory and Physician Shortages

USP Atwater is among the first federal prisons to fully transition from the shots to the sublingual strips. Aggravating the situation there is the fact that the strips could not be prescribed until each participant was seen by the doctor, who only comes to the prison one day a week. Cooke says sometimes medical visits are canceled when the prisoners are locked into their cells. The prison often locks down during fog because prison guards stationed in towers can’t see incarcerated people in the recreation yard. On top of that, Cooke says the transition to strips has been marred by constant inventory shortages. “There’s about 80 guys who just started the MAT program and are right now going without their strips for the second week in a row because staff aren’t keeping enough inventory in the pharmacy,” Cooke wrote on February 16. “There are guys who were due for their injection 10 days ago!!”

PERA’s Donson notes that MAT medication should not be in short supply any more than other pharmaceuticals, such as blood pressure medication. He speculated the shortage was caused by poor planning after the transition order came down.

As Brockman pointed out, the switch to strips can have another alarming consequence: more frequent drug use and all that comes with it. Individuals who are forced to wait for a replacement, and/or are switched to a less-than-adequate dose experience withdrawal symptoms that often cause them to seek out stronger drugs. This can result in a range of adverse outcomes: overdose, incident reports, increase in security classification, placement in restrictive housing, and the loss of good conduct time and/or First Step Act release credits.

One individual at the Victorville medium-security prison in California was reportedly placed in solitary confinement after overdosing. In addition, everyone in his unit was punished with loss of phone and email privileges — a factor his friends believe contributed to his death by suicide in February.

As the Prison Policy Initiative noted in a February report, “Ultimately, we find that ‘correctional healthcare’ is not really healthcare in the traditional sense …. [These systems] are designed in such a way that incarcerated people’s health needs are treated more like a nuisance than their ostensible mission. Instead, this walled-off healthcare system functions like a cost control service for corrections departments, organized around limiting spending and fending off lawsuits rather than actually caring for anyone’s health.”

If administered properly in prison, MAT can reduce post-release drug-related mortality by 80 to 85 percent. In other words, the BOP’s rush to cut costs in any way possible is penny-wise and pound-foolish.

Criminal legal reform advocates point out that a fully effective addiction treatment is ultimately not possible in prison.

“Jails and prisons are not healthcare institutions and their mandate for punishment makes patient-centered care impossible and health outcomes worse. Instead, the United States desperately needs healthcare infrastructure that can support people who use drugs outside of carceral settings,” concludes a Prison Policy Initiative report.
.

This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.

Pam Bailey  is co-founder of More Than Our Crimes and a freelance journalist.

 Revealed: Trump's CDC buried a measles forecast that stressed the need for vaccinations

REUTERS/Carlos Barria
U.S. President Donald Trump, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Secretary of Education Linda McMahon attend a cabinet meeting at the White House, in Washington, D.C., U.S., March 24, 2025.

Patricia Callahan
Pro Publica

March 29, 2025
ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom.

Leaders at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ordered staff this week not to release their experts’ assessment that found the risk of catching measles is high in areas near outbreaks where vaccination rates are lagging, according to internal records reviewed by ProPublica.

In an aborted plan to roll out the news, the agency would have emphasized the importance of vaccinating people against the highly contagious and potentially deadly disease that has spread to 19 states, the records show.

A CDC spokesperson told ProPublica in a written statement that the agency decided against releasing the assessment “because it does not say anything that the public doesn’t already know.” She added that the CDC continues to recommend vaccines as “the best way to protect against measles.”

But what the nation’s top public health agency said next shows a shift in its long-standing messaging about vaccines, a sign that it may be falling in line under Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime critic of vaccines:

“The decision to vaccinate is a personal one,” the statement said, echoing a line from a column Kennedy wrote for the Fox News website. “People should consult with their healthcare provider to understand their options to get a vaccine and should be informed about the potential risks and benefits associated with vaccines.”

ProPublica shared the new CDC statement about personal choice and risk with Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University School of Public Health. To her, the shift in messaging, and the squelching of this routine announcement, is alarming.

“I’m a bit stunned by that language,” Nuzzo said. “No vaccine is without risk, but that makes it sound like it’s a very active coin toss of a decision. We’ve already had more cases of measles in 2025 than we had in 2024, and it’s spread to multiple states. It is not a coin toss at this point.”

For many years, the CDC hasn’t minced words on vaccines. It promoted them with confidence. One campaign was called “Get My Flu Shot.” The agency’s website told medical providers they play a critical role in helping parents choose vaccines for their children: “Instead of saying ‘What do you want to do about shots?,’ say ‘Your child needs three shots today.’”

Nuzzo wishes the CDC’s forecasters would put out more details of their data and evidence on the spread of measles, not less. “The growing scale and severity of this measles outbreak and the urgent need for more data to guide the response underscores why we need a fully staffed and functional CDC and more resources for state and local health departments,” she said.

Kennedy’s agency oversees the CDC and on Thursday announced it was poised to eliminate 2,400 jobs there.

When asked what role, if any, Kennedy played in the decision to not release the risk assessment, HHS’ communications director said the aborted announcement “was part of an ongoing process to improve communication processes — nothing more, nothing less.” The CDC, he reiterated, continues to recommend vaccination “as the best way to protect against measles.”

“Secretary Kennedy believes that the decision to vaccinate is a personal one and that people should consult with their healthcare provider to understand their options to get a vaccine,” Andrew G. Nixon said. “It is important that the American people have radical transparency and be informed to make personal healthcare decisions.”

Responding to questions about criticism of the decision among some CDC staff, Nixon wrote, “Some individuals at the CDC seem more interested in protecting their own status or agenda rather than aligning with this Administration and the true mission of public health.”

The CDC’s risk assessment was carried out by its Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics, which relied, in part, on new disease data from the outbreak in Texas. The CDC created the center to address a major shortcoming laid bare during the COVID-19 pandemic. It functions like a National Weather Service for infectious diseases, harnessing data and expertise to predict the course of outbreaks like a meteorologist warns of storms.

Other risk assessments by the center have been posted by the CDC even though their conclusions might seem obvious.

In late February, for example, forecasters analyzing the spread of H5N1 bird flu said people who come “in contact with potentially infected animals or contaminated surfaces or fluids” faced a moderate to high risk of contracting the disease. The risk to the general U.S. population, they said, was low.

In the case of the measles assessment, modelers at the center determined the risk of the disease for the general public in the U.S. is low, but they found the risk is high in communities with low vaccination rates that are near outbreaks or share close social ties to those areas with outbreaks. The CDC had moderate confidence in the assessment, according to an internal Q&A that explained the findings. The agency, it said, lacks detailed data about the onset of the illness for all patients in West Texas and is still learning about the vaccination rates in affected communities as well as travel and social contact among those infected. (The H5N1 assessment was also made with moderate confidence.)

The internal plan to roll out the news of the forecast called for the expert physician who’s leading the CDC’s response to measles to be the chief spokesperson answering questions. “It is important to note that at local levels, vaccine coverage rates may vary considerably, and pockets of unvaccinated people can exist even in areas with high vaccination coverage overall,” the plan said. “The best way to protect against measles is to get the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine.”

This week, though, as the number of confirmed cases rose to 483, more than 30 agency staff were told in an email that after a discussion in the CDC director’s office, “leadership does not want to pursue putting this on the website.”

The cancellation was “not normal at all,” said a CDC staff member who spoke anonymously for fear of reprisal with layoffs looming. “I’ve never seen a rollout plan that was canceled at that far along in the process.”

Anxiety among CDC staff has been building over whether the agency will bend its public health messages to match those of Kennedy, a lawyer who founded an anti-vaccine group and referred clients to a law firm suing a vaccine manufacturer.

During Kennedy’s first week on the job, HHS halted the CDC campaign that encouraged people to get flu shots during a ferocious flu season. On the night that the Trump administration began firing probationary employees across the federal government, some key CDC flu webpages were taken down. Remnants of some of the campaign webpages were restored after NPR reported this.

But some at the agency felt like the new leadership had sent a message loud and clear: When next to nobody was paying attention, long-standing public health messages could be silenced.

On the day in February that the world learned that an unvaccinated child had died of measles in Texas, the first such death in the U.S. since 2015, the HHS secretary downplayed the seriousness of the outbreak. “We have measles outbreaks every year,” he said at a cabinet meeting with President Donald Trump.

In an interview on Fox News this month, Kennedy championed doctors in Texas who he said were treating measles with a steroid, an antibiotic and cod liver oil, a supplement that is high in vitamin A. “They’re seeing what they describe as almost miraculous and instantaneous recovery from that,” Kennedy said.

As parents near the outbreak in Texas stocked up on vitamin A supplements, doctors there raced to assure parents that only vaccination, not the vitamin, can prevent measles.

Still, the CDC added an entry on Vitamin A to its measles website for clinicians.

On Wednesday, CNN reported that several hospitalized children in Lubbock, Texas, had abnormal liver function, a likely sign of toxicity from too much vitamin A.

Texas health officials also said that the Trump administration’s decision to rescind $11 billion in pandemic-related grants across the country will hinder their ability to respond to the growing outbreak, according to The Texas Tribune.

Measles is among the most contagious diseases and can be dangerous. About 20% of unvaccinated people who get measles wind up in the hospital. And nearly 1 to 3 of every 1,000 children with measles will die from respiratory and neurologic complications. The virus can linger in the air for two hours after an infected person has left an area, and patients can spread measles before they even know they have it.

This week Amtrak said it was notifying customers that they may have been exposed to the disease this month when a passenger with measles rode one of its trains from New York City to Washington, D.C.

Q&A: UTA expert on Texas' growing measles crisis

Public health professor Erin Carlson says increasing vaccinations is key to containing state’s largest outbreak in 30 years

University of Texas at Arlington

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Erin Carlson, associate clinical professor and director of graduate public health programs at The University of Texas at Arlington’s College of Nursing and Health Innovation, says the erosion of trust in the unequivocally safe and effective MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine is dangerous. She discussed the latest developments of the outbreak.

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Credit: UTA

Measles is a highly contagious disease that was declared eliminated from the U.S. by the World Health Organization 25 years ago due to the success of vaccination efforts. Yet, Texas counties primarily in the South Plains and Panhandle regions, continue to deal with the state’s largest measles outbreak in 30 years.

As of March 25, there were 327 confirmed cases since the first two were reported in late January, with more than 60 cases confirmed in just the last week. According to the Texas Department of State Health Services, at least 40 people have been hospitalized so far.

Erin Carlson, associate clinical professor and director of graduate public health programs at The University of Texas at Arlington’s College of Nursing and Health Innovation, says the erosion of trust in the unequivocally safe and effective MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine is dangerous. She discussed the latest developments of the outbreak.

The U.S. declared measles eliminated in 2000 thanks to a successful vaccination program. What does “eliminated” mean in this context?

We define elimination as stopping disease transmission within a defined geographic area such as a country or a region, not globally. Even when a disease is eliminated according to the epidemiological definition, it doesn’t mean that we can become lax in our interventions. It means that we must maintain those to continue the elimination of measles from the United States.

What factors have contributed to the current outbreak?

We have seen fewer people getting vaccinated compared to historical levels, which has allowed these outbreaks to take hold.

How effective and safe is the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine?

It is unequivocally safe and effective. We have decades of research. There are devastating complications from measles, but we don’t see these types of complications or side effects from the vaccine. It is 97% effective against measles.

Most know measles to be a highly contagious disease. What exactly is measles, and how does it spread from person to person?

If you wanted to design a virus to be as contagious as possible, you would design measles. It has the highest reproduction rate in the world. For every one person who has the disease, they spread it to 12 to 18 people on average. That’s extraordinary.

With measles, a person is infected for four days before they ever get the rash. For four days, they are spreading the disease before they have signs that they’re sick. Then, once the rash develops, they’re contagious for another four days. So, there are eight days where they can be spreading the disease, eight days when they’re highly contagious.

What are the potential health complications for those who contract it? How is it cured?

With measles, we tend to think of it as a rash, but it is a respiratory illness. Just like with influenza or COVID-19, pneumonia is a key complication that can develop.

Encephalitis, inflammation of the brain that can lead to seizures and brain damage, is another leading complication. There is also a very scary brain disorder called subacute sclerosing panencephalitis, which you should think of as Alzheimer’s in young people. Measles also can lead to vitamin A deficiency, which can cause eye damage and blindness.

There is a misconception that measles can be treated with vitamin A, which is not true. Vitamin A supplementation helps reduce the chance of blindness, which can be a complication of measles infection.

There is no cure for measles. It’s just palliative treatment, helping people be comfortable.

What advice would you give to parents who have not yet had their child vaccinated against measles?

Get vaccinated. Measles can be deadly or lead to serious lifelong health complications. This is a disease that is completely preventable.

Vaccinations also benefit our communities and our neighbors. Maybe your own child is very healthy and robust, but you may have another child in your community who cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons. We all can do our part to keep the most vulnerable from getting sick.

‘We need aid’: rescuers in quake-hit Myanmar city plead for help


ByAFP
March 29, 2025


More than 90 people are feared to be trapped in Mandalay's Sky Villa Condominium development - Copyright AFP Sai Aung MAIN

Joe Stenson and Sebastien Berger

Exhausted, overwhelmed rescuers in Myanmar’s second-biggest city pleaded for help Saturday as they struggled to free hundreds of people trapped in buildings destroyed by a devastating earthquake.

Friday’s shallow 7.7-magnitude quake destroyed dozens of buildings in Mandalay, the country’s cultural capital and home to more than 1.7 million people.

In one street, a monastery’s clock tower lay collapsed on its side, its hands pointing to 12:55 pm — just minutes after the time the quake struck.

Among the worst-hit buildings in the city is the Sky Villa Condominium development, where more than 90 people are feared to be trapped.

The building’s 12 storeys were reduced to six by the quake, the cracked pastel green walls of the upper floors perched on the crushed remains of the lower levels.

A woman’s body stuck out of the wreckage, her arm and hair hanging down.

Rescuers clambered over the ruins painstakingly removing pieces of rubble and wreckage by hand as they sought to open up passageways to those trapped inside.

Scattered around were the remains of people’s lives — a child’s plastic bunny toy, pieces of furniture and a picture of the New York skyline.

Some residents sheltered under the shade of nearby trees, where they had spent the night, a few possessions they had managed to salvage — blankets, motorbike helmets — alongside them.

Elsewhere, rescuers in flip-flops and minimal protective equipment picked by hand over the remains of buildings, shouting into the rubble in the hope of hearing the answering cry of a survivor.

“There are many victims in condo apartments. More than 100 were pulled out last night,” one rescue worker who requested anonymity told AFP.



– Carrying bodies by truck –



Widespread power cuts have hampered rescue efforts, with emergency personnel relying on portable generators for power.

After more than 24 hours of desperate searching, many are exhausted and desperate for relief.

“We have been here since last night. We haven’t got any sleep. More help is needed here,” the rescue worker told AFP.

“We have enough manpower but we don’t have enough cars. We are transporting dead bodies using light trucks. About 10-20 bodies in one light truck.”

Myanmar is accustomed to regular earthquakes, bisected north to south by the active Sagaing Fault, but the violent fury of Friday’s quake was exceptional.

More than 1,000 deaths have been confirmed already, with nearly 2,400 injured, and with the scale of the disaster only beginning to emerge, the toll is likely to rise significantly.

“Yesterday, when the earthquake happened, I was in my home. It was quite scary,” Mandalay resident Ba Chit, 55, told AFP.

“My family members are safe, but other people were affected. I feel so sorry for them. I feel very sad to see this kind of situation.”

Myanmar’s ability to cope with the aftermath of the quake will be hampered by the effects of four years of civil war, which have ravaged the country’s healthcare and emergency systems.

In an indication of the potential enormity of the crisis, the junta has issued an exceptionally rare call for international aid.

Previous military rulers have spurned all foreign assistance even after major natural disasters.

“We need aid. We don’t have enough of anything,” resident Thar Aye, 68, told AFP.

“I feel so sad to see this tragic situation. I’ve never experienced anything like this before.”

Aftershocks rattle Mandalay as rescuers search for survivors in Myanmar quake

By AFP
March 29, 2025


Residents scrambled desperately through collapsed buildings Sunday searching for survivors as aftershocks rattled the devastated city of Mandalay 

- Copyright AFP Sai Aung MAIN

Hla-Hla Htay, with Montira Rungjirajittranon in Bangkok

Residents scrambled desperately through collapsed buildings Sunday searching for survivors as aftershocks rattled the devastated city of Mandalay, two days after a massive earthquake killed more than 1,600 people in Myanmar and at least 11 in neighbouring Thailand.

The initial 7.7-magnitude quake struck near the central Myanmar city of Mandalay early Friday afternoon, followed minutes later by a 6.7-magnitude aftershock.

The tremors collapsed buildings, downed bridges and buckled roads, with mass destruction seen in the city of more than 1.7 million people.

As dawn broke Sunday, tea shop owner Win Lwin picked his way through the remains of a collapsed restaurant on a main road in his neighbourhood, tossing bricks aside one by one.

“About seven people died here” when the quake struck Friday, he told AFP. “I’m looking for more bodies but I know there cannot be any survivors.

“We don’t know how many bodies there could be but we are looking.”

About an hour later, a small aftershock struck, sending people scurrying out of a hotel for safety, following a similar tremor felt late Saturday evening.

Truckloads of firemen gathered at one of Mandalay’s main fire stations to be dispatched to sites around the city.

The night before, rescuers had pulled a woman out alive from the wreckage of a collapsed apartment building, with applause ringing out as she was carried by stretcher to an ambulance.

Myanmar’s ruling junta said in a statement Saturday that at least 1,644 people were killed and more than 3,400 injured in the country, with at least 139 more missing.

But with unreliable communications, the true scale of the disaster remains unclear in the isolated military-ruled state, and the toll is expected to rise significantly.

Junta chief Min Aung Hlaing issued an exceptionally rare appeal for international aid on Friday, indicating the severity of the calamity.

Previous military governments have shunned foreign assistance, even after major natural disasters.

Myanmar has already been ravaged by four years of civil war sparked by a military coup in 2021.

Anti-junta fighters in the country have declared a two-week partial ceasefire in quake-affected regions starting Sunday, the shadow “National Unity Government” said in a statement.

The government in exile said it would “collaborate with the UN and NGOs to ensure security, transportation, and the establishment of temporary rescue and medical camps” in areas that it controls, according to the statement, which was released on social media.

Aid agencies have warned that Myanmar is unprepared to deal with a disaster of this magnitude.

Some 3.5 million people were displaced by the raging civil war, many at risk of hunger, even before the quake struck.



– Bangkok building collapse –



Across the border in Thailand, rescuers in Bangkok worked Sunday to pluck out survivors trapped when a 30-storey skyscraper under construction collapsed after the Friday earthquake.

At least 11 people have been killed in the Thai capital, with dozens more still trapped under the immense pile of debris where the skyscraper once stood.

Bangkok authorities were expected to release another statement at 9 am (0200 GMT), with fears of a further toll increase.

Workers at the site used large mechanical diggers in an attempt to find victims still trapped on Sunday morning.

Sniffer dogs and thermal imaging drones have also been deployed to seek signs of life in the collapsed building, close to the Chatuchak weekend market popular among tourists.

Authorities said they would be deploying engineers to assess and repair 165 damaged buildings in the city on Sunday.

burs-pfc/dhc

Scientists explain why Myanmar quake was so deadly

By AFP
March 29, 2025

Experts say Friday's devastating earthquake in Myanmar was likely the strongest to hit the country in decades - Copyright AFP Sai Aung MAIN

Experts say that the devastating earthquake in Myanmar on Friday was likely the strongest to hit the country in decades, with disaster modelling suggesting thousands could be dead.

Automatic assessments from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) said the shallow 7.7-magnitude quake northwest of the central Myanmar city of Sagaing triggered a red alert for shaking-related fatalities and economic losses.

“High casualties and extensive damage are probable and the disaster is likely widespread,” it said, locating the epicentre near the central Myanmar city of Mandalay, home to more than a million people.

Myanmar’s ruling junta said on Saturday morning that the number killed had passed 1,000, with more than 2,000 injured.

However, the USGS analysis said there was a 35 percent chance that possible fatalities could be in the range of 10,000-100,000 people.

The USGS offered a similar likelihood that the financial damage could total tens of thousands of millions of dollars, warning that it might exceed the GDP of Myanmar.

Weak infrastructure will complicate relief efforts in the isolated, military-ruled state, where rescue services and the healthcare system have already been ravaged by four years of civil war sparked by a military coup in 2021.

– Dangerous fault –

Bill McGuire, emeritus professor of geophysical and climate hazards at University College London (UCL), said it was “probably the biggest earthquake on the Myanmar mainland in three-quarters of a century”.

A 6.7-magnitude aftershock struck minutes after the first and McGuire warned that “more can be expected”.

Rebecca Bell, a tectonics expert at Imperial College London (ICL), suggested it was a side-to-side “strike-slip” of the Sagaing Fault.

This is where the Indian tectonic plate, to the west, meets the Sunda plate that forms much of Southeast Asia — a fault similar in scale and movement to the San Andreas Fault in California.

“The Sagaing fault is very long, 1,200 kilometres (745 miles), and very straight,” Bell said. “The straight nature means earthquakes can rupture over large areas — and the larger the area of the fault that slips, the larger the earthquake.”

Earthquakes in such cases can be “particularly destructive”, Bell added, explaining that since the quake takes place at a shallow depth, its seismic energy has dissipated little by the time it reaches populated areas above.

That causes “a lot of shaking at the surface”, Bell said.

– Building boom –

Myanmar has been hit by powerful quakes in the past.

There have been more than 14 earthquakes with a magnitude of 6 or above in the past century, including a magnitude 6.8 earthquake near Mandalay in 1956, said Brian Baptie, a seismologist with the British Geological Survey.

Ian Watkinson, from the department of earth sciences at Royal Holloway University of London, said what had changed in recent decades was the “boom in high-rise buildings constructed from reinforced concrete”.

Myanmar has been riven by years of conflict and there is a low level of building design enforcement.

“Critically, during all previous magnitude 7 or larger earthquakes along the Sagaing Fault, Myanmar was relatively undeveloped, with mostly low-rise timber-framed buildings and brick-built religious monuments,” Watkinson said.

“Today’s earthquake is the first test of modern Myanmar’s infrastructure against a large, shallow-focus earthquake close to its major cities.”

Baptie said that at least 2.8 million people in Myanmar were in hard-hit areas where most lived in buildings “constructed from timber and unreinforced brick masonry” that are vulnerable to earthquake shaking.

“The usual mantra is that ‘earthquakes don’t kill people; collapsing infrastructure does’,” said Ilan Kelman, an expert in disaster reduction at UCL.

“Governments are responsible for planning regulations and building codes. This disaster exposes what governments of Burma/Myanmar failed to do long before the earthquake, which would have saved lives during the shaking.”

– Skyscraper checks –

Strong tremors also rocked neighbouring Thailand, where a 30-storey skyscraper under construction was reduced to a pile of dusty concrete, trapping workers in the debris.

Christian Malaga-Chuquitaype, from ICL’s civil and environmental engineering department, said the nature of the ground in Bangkok contributed to the impact on the city, despite being some 1,000 kilometres (620 miles) from the epicentre in Myanmar.

“Even though Bangkok is far from active faults, its soft soil amplifies the shaking,” he said. “This affects especially tall buildings during distant earthquakes.”

Malaga-Chuquitaype said the construction techniques in Bangkok favouring “flat slabs” — where floors are held only by columns without using strengthening beams, like a table supported only by legs — were a “problematic design”.

He said that initial video analysis of the collapsed tower block in Bangkok suggested this type of construction technique had been used.

“It performs poorly during earthquakes, often failing in a brittle and sudden (almost explosive) manner,” he said.

Roberto Gentile, a catastrophe risk modelling expert from UCL, said the “dramatic collapse” of the Bangkok tower block meant that “other tall buildings in the city may require a thorough assessment”.

Bangkok city authorities said they will deploy more than 100 engineers to inspect buildings for safety after receiving more than 2,000 reports of damage.

Myanmar quake: what we know


By AFP
March 28, 2025


Powerful quake hits Myanmar - Copyright AFP Valentina BRESCHI, Cléa PÉCULIER
Sara HUSSEIN

A powerful earthquake centred in Myanmar has killed more than 150 people in the war-torn country and neighbouring Thailand and caused widespread damage.

Here is what we know:



– Powerful, and shallow –

The 7.7-magnitude quake hit northwest of Myanmar’s Sagaing at 12:50 pm (0650 GMT) on Friday at a shallow depth of 10 kilometres (six miles).

It was followed minutes later by a powerful 6.7-magnitude aftershock and a dozen smaller tremors.

The quake was felt across the region, with shaking reported from India to the west and China to the east, as well as Cambodia and Laos.

The quake hit along the Sagaing Fault that runs from the coast to Myanmar’s northern border, according to earthquake scientists Judith Hubbard and Kyle Bradley.

It “has long been considered one of the most dangerous strike-slip faults on Earth” because of its proximity to major cities Yangon and Mandalay, as well as capital Naypyidaw, they wrote in an analysis.

The fault is comparatively simple and straight, which geologists believe can lead to especially large quakes, they added.



– Over 150 killed –



At least 144 people have been confirmed dead in the quake in Myanmar, according to the country’s junta chief.

However, Min Aung Hlaing warned the toll was likely to rise given the widespread destruction across the country.

Myanmar’s four years of civil war, sparked by the military seizing power, have also weakened the country’s emergency and health services, leaving them ill-equipped to respond to such a disaster.

In Thailand, 10 people were killed in Bangkok, most in the collapse of an under-construction skyscraper.

But up to 100 more construction workers were believed trapped in the rubble of the building, near the sprawling Chatuchak market.

Rescue operations continued throughout the night, though it was proving complicated to pick through the unstable rubble.



– Widespread damage –

The quake caused extensive damage in Myanmar.

There was massive destruction in Mandalay, where multiple buildings collapsed into piles of rubble and twisted metal coated in dust, dotted with people attempting rescues.

The Ava bridge running across the Irawaddy river from Sagaing, built nearly 100 years ago, collapsed into the swirling waters below.

There were reports of damage to Mandalay airport, potentially complicating relief efforts, as well as to the city’s university and palace, according to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

In Naypyidaw, AFP reporters saw buildings toppled and roads ruptured.

At a hospital in the capital, patients were being treated outdoors after the quake damaged the building, bringing down the emergency department’s entrance.

Electricity outages were reported in several places, with power limited to four hours in Yangon due to quake damage.

Communications across affected areas were also patchy, with phone networks largely down.

In Bangkok, a crane collapsed at a second building site and the city shut down metro and light rail services overnight to inspect for damage.

Several hundred people slept in parks overnight, city authorities said, either unable to get home or worried about the structural integrity of their buildings.

The quake prompted thousands of people to flee shaking buildings in Thailand, where quakes are rare.

Even hospitals were evacuated, with one woman delivering a baby in the street in Bangkok, and a surgeon continuing to operate on a patient after being forced to leave the theatre mid-operation.



– Aid pleas, offers –



The scale of the devastation prompted Myanmar’s isolated military regime to make a rare plea for international assistance.

Myanmar’s junta chief invited “any country, any organisation” to help with relief and said he he “opened all ways for foreign aid”.

Offers of assistance flooded in, with neighbour India among the first to say it was ready to help.

The European Union offered support, and US President Donald Trump said Washington had “already spoken” with Myanmar about aid.

“It’s a real bad one, and we will be helping,” he told reporters.

The World Health Organization said it was preparing to surge support in response to “a very, very big threat to life and health.”

burs-sah/pdw/fox


Rescuers dig for survivors after huge quake hits Myanmar, Thailand


ByAFP
March 28, 2025


Rescue workers walk past debris at a construction site after a building collapsed in Bangkok following the earthquake - Copyright AFP Lillian SUWANRUMPHA

Hla-Hla Htay with Montira Rungjirajittranon in Bangkok

Rescuers dug through the rubble of collapsed buildings on Saturday in a desperate search for survivors after a huge earthquake hit Myanmar and Thailand, killing more than 150 people.

The shallow 7.7-magnitude quake struck northwest of the city of Sagaing in central Myanmar in the early afternoon, followed minutes later by a 6.7-magnitude aftershock.

The quake destroyed buildings, downed bridges, and buckled roads across swathes of Myanmar, with severe damage reported in the second biggest city, Mandalay.

At least 144 people were killed and over 700 injured in Myanmar, according to junta chief Min Aung Hlaing, but with communications disrupted, the true scale of the disaster has yet to emerge from the isolated military-ruled state.

It was the biggest quake to hit Myanmar in over a century, according to US geologists, and the tremors were powerful enough to severely damage buildings across Bangkok, hundreds of kilometres (miles) away from the epicentre.

Rescuers in the Thai capital worked through the night searching for workers trapped when a 30-storey skyscraper under construction collapsed, reduced in seconds to a pile of rubble and twisted metal by the force of the shaking.

Bangkok governor Chadchart Sittipunt told AFP that around 10 people had been confirmed killed across the city, most in the skyscraper collapse.

But up to 100 workers were still unaccounted for at the building, close to the Chatuchak weekend market that is a magnet for tourists.

“We are doing our best with the resources we have because every life matters,” Chadchart told reporters at the scene.

“Our priority is acting as quickly as possible to save them all.”

Bangkok city authorities said they will deploy more than 100 engineers to inspect buildings for safety after receiving over 2,000 reports of damage.

Up to 400 people were forced to spend the night in the open air in city parks as their homes were not safe to return to, Chadchart said.

Significant quakes are extremely rare in Bangkok, and Friday’s tremors sent shoppers and workers rushing into the street in alarm across the city.

While there was no widespread destruction, the shaking brought some dramatic images of rooftop swimming pools sloshing their contents down the side of many of the city’s towering apartment blocks and hotels.

Even hospitals were evacuated, with one woman delivering her baby outdoors after being moved from a hospital building. A surgeon also continued to operate on a patient after evacuating, completing the operation outside, a spokesman told AFP.



– Rare junta plea for help –



But the worst of the damage was in Myanmar, where four years of civil war sparked by a military coup have ravaged the healthcare and emergency response systems.

Junta chief Min Aung Hlaing issued an exceptionally rare appeal for international aid, indicating the severity of the calamity. Previous military regimes have shunned foreign assistance even after major natural disasters.

The country declared a state of emergency across the six worst-affected regions after the quake, and at one major hospital in the capital, Naypyidaw, medics were forced to treat the wounded in the open air.

One official described it as a “mass casualty area”.

“I haven’t seen (something) like this before. We are trying to handle the situation. I’m so exhausted now,” a doctor told AFP.

Mandalay, a city of more than 1.7 million people, appeared to have been badly hit. AFP photos showed dozens of buildings reduced to rubble.

A resident reached by phone told AFP that a hospital and a hotel had been destroyed, and said the city was badly lacking in rescue personnel.

A huge queue of buses and lorries lined up at a checkpoint to enter the capital early on Saturday.

Offers of foreign assistance began coming in, with President Donald Trump on Friday pledging US help.

“It’s terrible,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office about the quake when asked if he would respond to the appeal by Myanmar’s military rulers.

“It’s a real bad one, and we will be helping. We’ve already spoken with the country.”

India, France and the European Union offered to provide assistance, while the WHO said it was mobilising to prepare trauma injury supplies.

burs-pdw/sah/fox

‘Everyone was screaming’: quake shocks Thailand tourists

By AFP
March 29, 2025


For many tourists who flock to Thailand, the quake was a disconcerting experience - Copyright AFP MANAN VATSYAYANA

Sally Jensen and Montira Rungjirajittranon

French tourist Augustin Gus was shopping for a t-shirt in one of Bangkok’s many malls when a massive quake began shaking the building in the Thai capital.

“Just when I left the elevator, the earth starts moving. I thought it was me… it was not me,” the 23-year-old told AFP.

“Everyone was screaming and running, so I started screaming as well.”

The powerful 7.7-magnitude quake struck Friday afternoon in neighbouring Myanmar, where over 1,000 people have been killed and several cities face large-scale destruction.

The damage and toll was far smaller in Bangkok, with 10 people confirmed dead so far, most in the collapse of an under-construction skyscraper.

For many tourists who flocked to the popular destination, the quake was a disconcerting experience.

Some were lazing in rooftop pools when the powerful shaking began to slop the water off the edge of high-rise buildings.

Others were left stranded in the streets with their luggage when the city’s metro and light-rail system shut down for safety checks after the quake.

The city’s residents, unused to earthquakes, were not able to offer much guidance, said one business traveller from the Solomon Islands, who asked not to be named.

“Unfortunately there were no procedures in place” during his evacuation from the 21st floor of a Bangkok skyscraper on Friday.

“So everyone was getting confused,” he said. “I just wanted to get out.”

Cristina Mangion, 31, from Malta, was in her hotel bed when the shaking began.

“I thought I was feeling dizzy from the heat,” she told AFP.

Hotel staff came to knock at the doors of each room to offer help, and Mangion’s father quickly messaged to check she was okay.



– Soldiering on –



Despite the experience Mangion and Gus were among the tourists out on Saturday at the sprawling Chatuchak market.

The popular tourist draw is not far from the scene of the deadly building collapse, and market security guard Yim Songtakob said crowds were thinner than usual.

“That’s normal… people are scared,” said the 55-year-old, who has worked at the market for a decade.

Still, Mangion said she would not be deterred by the tremors.

“I feel bad for what happened,” she said.

“I think the best thing is to actually come here and still continue as if nothing happened.

“This weekend will probably be harder than usual for business,” she added.

Gus also said he was not worried about enjoying the rest of his three-week trip.

“I’ll still have great memories, it’s just an experience and that’s why I’m travelling,” he said.

Frenchman Gilles Franke, a regular visitor to Thailand who hopes to one day retire in the country, was equally sanguine about the risk of aftershocks.

“When it’s your time, it’s your time,” the 59-year-old told AFP.

“You can die when you cross the road, you can die at any time in your life.”

Deadly earthquake forces Thai patients into sports hall


By AFP
March 29, 2025


Patients were taken to the canteen of a hospital in Bangkok after fears that strong tremors had damaged the main building - Copyright AFP Montira RUNGJIRAJITTRANON

Beneath basketball hoops and beside football goals, hospital beds line a sports hall — patients evacuated from a hospital in the Thai capital for fear of damage by a devastating earthquake.

The shallow 7.7-magnitude quake struck central Myanmar on Friday afternoon, followed minutes later by a 6.7-magnitude aftershock — with powerful tremors shaking Bangkok, more than 1,000 kilometres (600 miles) to the south.

When the earthquake struck, patients at Rajavithi Hospital were rushed out of the building, some helped down stairs to nearby makeshift shelters, including to the hospital’s canteen and sports hall.

The worst impact was in Myanmar, where the junta said at least 1,002 people were killed and nearly 2,400 injured.

Around 10 more deaths have been confirmed in Bangkok, where the Friday lunchtime tremors shook buildings and created panic on the streets.

The construction site of a new 30-storey government building quickly turned into a disaster scene, with people jumping into cars to escape or shrieking as they fled on foot.

Dramatic video footage showed the tremor rocking a high-rise hotel, with water from its rooftop pool whipping over the building’s edge.



– Fear –



At the hospital, staff rushed to take the patients outside.

One patient, being treated for leukaemia, told AFP that she was moved from her private room to a hall in Rajavithi Hospital, walking down multiple flights of stairs aided by nurses.

“I need to receive my blood platelets soon, and the hospital is currently checking which other hospital can provide the treatment,” she said, asking not to be named.

Some were later moved back inside, while others were transferred to different hospitals this morning, a hospital staff member said.

On Saturday, around 30 patients were in the hall, where hospital staff provided basic medical care including blood transfusions.

Many Bangkok residents were terrified, remaining fearful about aftershocks.

Some chose to sleep outside under trees in open spaces in Bangkok, or popped up tents in the park for the night.

Others came out to help.

Panadda Wongphudee, an actor and a former Miss Thailand who often takes part in volunteer activities, handed out refreshments to rescue workers.

‘Blink of an eye’: survivor tells of Bangkok skyscraper collapse horror


By AFP
March 28, 2025


Friends and relatives wait for news about possible survivors at the site of an under-construction building collapse in Bangkok

 - Copyright GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP CARL COURT

Lapyae KO

A construction worker told Saturday how he cheated death when a Bangkok skyscraper collapsed “in the blink of an eye” after a massive earthquake hit Myanmar and Thailand.

Tearful family members gathered at the remains of the 30-storey building, which crumbled to rubble in just seconds on Friday, clinging to shreds of hope that their loved ones who were working when it fell might be found alive.

The tower was being built to house government offices when the quake struck, and construction worker Khin Aung told AFP how the building collapsed just after his brother had entered to start his shift.

“When my shift ended around 1:00 pm I went outside to get water and I saw my younger brother before I went out,” he told AFP.

Tremors from the 7.7-magnitude quake centred in neighbouring Myanmar — where the ruling junta said at least 694 people had died — hit Bangkok around 1:20 pm (0620 GMT), shaking the building.

“When I went outside, I saw dust everywhere and I just ran to escape from the collapsing building,” Khin Aung said.

“I video-called my brother and friends but only one picked up the phone. But I can’t see his face and I heard he was running.

“At that point the whole building was shaking but while I was on a call with him, I lost the call and the building collapsed.”

Authorities say up to 100 workers may be trapped in the mass of rubble and twisted metal that is all that remains of the tower. At least five are confirmed dead but the toll is almost certain to rise.

“I can’t describe how I feel — it happened in the blink of an eye,” said Khin Aung.

“All my friends and my brother were in the building when it collapsed. I don’t have any words to say.”



– Desperate relatives –



Bangkok’s skyline is ever-changing, with buildings constantly torn down and shiny new skyscrapers thrown up.

The ceaseless reinvention is powered by an army of labourers, a huge proportion of whom are drawn from Myanmar by the prospect of regular work, a peaceful country and better wages than at home.

Many relatives of workers from Myanmar gathered at the site on Saturday hoping for news of the missing.

Khin Aung and his brother — married with two children — have been working in Bangkok for six months.

“I heard they sent 20 workers to hospital but I don’t know who are they and my friends and brother are among them,” he said.

“I hope my brother and friends are in hospital. If they are at the hospital, I have hope. If they are under this building, there is no hope for them to survive.”

Thai woman Chanpen Kaewnoi, 39, waited anxiously for news of her mother and sister, who were in the building when it went down.

“My colleague called and said she couldn’t find my mum or my sister. I thought mum might have slipped and maybe my sister stayed to help her,” she told AFP.

“I want to see them, I hope I can find them. I hope they will not be lost. I still have hope, 50 percent.”

As distraught families waited for news, rescue workers pressed on with the delicate task of searching the ruins without triggering further collapses.

Lines of wounded at Myanmar hospital after powerful quake

Turkey opposition calls mass rally in Istanbul

By AFP
March 29, 2025

Students have kept up their protests, despite a growing police crackdown

 - Copyright AFP Sai Aung MAIN

Fulya OZERKAN

Protesters were to join a mass rally in Istanbul Saturday at the call of Turkey’s main opposition CHP over the jailing of the city’s mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, a top figure in the party whose arrest has sparked 10 days of the country’s biggest street demonstrations in a decade.

Imamoglu’s detention on March 19 has also prompted a repressive government response that has been sharply condemned by rights groups and drawn criticism from abroad.

The rally, which begins at 0900 GMT in Maltepe on the Asian side of Istanbul, is the first such CHP-led gathering since Tuesday and comes on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration marking the end of Ramadan, which starts Sunday.

Widely seen as the only Turkish politician capable of challenging President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the ballot box, Imamoglu was elected as the CHP’s candidate for the 2028 presidential race on the day he was jailed.

“Imamoglu’s candidacy for president is the beginning of a journey that will guarantee justice and the nation’s sovereignty. Let’s go to Maltepe.. and start our march to power together!” CHP leader Ozgur Ozel said on X.

The protests over his arrest quickly spread across Turkey, with vast crowds joining mass nightly rallies outside Istanbul City Hall called by the CHP, that often degenerated into running battles with riot police.

Although the last such rally was Tuesday, student groups have kept up their own protests, most of them masked despite a police crackdown that has seen nearly 2,000 people arrested.

Among them were 20 minors who were arrested between March 22-25, of whom seven remained in custody, the Istanbul Bar Association said Friday.

In Istanbul, at least 511 students were detained, many in predawn raids, of whom 275 were jailed, lawyer Ferhat Guzel told AFP, while admitting that the number was “probably much higher”.

The authorities have also cracked down on media coverage, arresting 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deporting a BBC correspondent and arresting a Swedish reporter who flew into Istanbul to cover the unrest.

Although 11 journalists were freed Thursday, among them AFP photographer Yasin Akgul, two more were detained on Friday as was Imamoglu’s lawyer Mehmet Pehlivan, who was later granted conditional release.

Swedish journalist Joakim Medin, who flew into Turkey on Thursday to cover the demonstrations, was jailed on Friday, his employer Dagens ETC told AFP, saying it was not immediately clear what the charges were.

– ‘Accusations 100 percent false’ –


Unconfirmed reports in the Turkish media said Medin was being held for “insulting the president” and belonging to a “terror organisation”.

“I know that these accusations are false, 100 percent false,” Dagens ETC’s editor-in-chief Andreas Gustavsson wrote on X account.

In a post on social media, Swedish Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard said Stockholm was taking his arrest “seriously”.

Turkish authorities held BBC journalist Mark Lowen for 17 hours on Wednesday before deporting him on the grounds he posed “a threat to public order”, the broadcaster said.

Turkey’s communications directorate put his deportation down to “a lack of accreditation”.

Baris Altintas, co-director of MLSA, the legal NGO helping many of the detainees, told AFP the authorities “seem to be very determined on limiting coverage of the protests.

“As such, we fear that the crackdown on the press will not only continue but also increase.”

burs-hmw/ach

Opinion

Turkey's president arrested his top opponent. Here's why it matters to the beleaguered free world.

(RNS) — Erdoğan's arrest of the Istanbul mayor is aimed at quelling an increasingly vocal political opposition. But Ekrem İmamoğlu is also indispensable to the Turkish president as a symbol of religious toleration — and a foil to Erdoğan's Islamist ideal.

Demonstrators shout slogans during a protest after Istanbul's Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu was arrested and sent to prison, in Istanbul, Turkey, Tuesday, March 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

Katherine Kelaidis
March 28, 2025

(RNS) — Earlier this month, the now-former mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem İmamoğlu, was arrested on corruption charges along with 100 other opposition leaders. The arrests have provoked massive demonstrations across the country, not least because many Turks believe the arrests are a thinly veiled crackdown by Turkish strongman President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on the increasingly popular opposition as a 2028 general election approaches. İmamoğlu is by far the most prominent of those opposition figures.

The conflict in Turkey in many ways mirrors the domestic tensions playing out in many parts of the world, as the rising tide of authoritarianism does battle against the liberal world order. Turkey’s history and geopolitical position makes its post-postmodern struggle unique, but also of wider concern. With the fate of religious pluralism in the Balkans and (one might argue) the very survival of Christianity in the Middle East in question, the outcome of Turkey’s political conflict is important for most anyone west of Moscow.

For nearly a century after Mustafa Kemal Atatürk invented the modern Turkish state, Turkey was not just secular, but aggressively secular. One of the “six arrows” of Kemalist ideology was the stringently areligious civic life the French call laïcité. If anything Turkey’s version outdid that of France, particularly in its anti-clericalism. The Kemalist consensus began to crumble at the end of the 20th century, however, and the election of Erdoğan to the presidency in 2014 (after 11 years as prime minister) marked what many believed would be the end of its dominance in Turkey.

RELATED: Authoritarian movements depend on political religions — not least in America

This was due in part to Erdoğan’s purported moderate Islamist leanings. In fact, like many budding strongmen of our era, Erdoğan exhibits no particular ideology beyond his own power, but he did recognize the growing power of Islamist factions in the country and has curried favor with them. In 2020, for instance, he oversaw the reconversion of the Hagia Sophia into a mosque after its 85 years as a museum.

Modern Islamism and the Ottoman past have also shaped Erdoğan’s foreign policy and soft power strategy. Turkey has funded the building of mosques throughout the Balkans and eastern Mediterranean, including the new Turkish-funded Namazgah Mosque that Erdoğan personally inaugurated in Tirana, Albania, last year, and the massive Ottoman-style mosque in the disputed territory of Northern Cyprus completed in 2018. From Syria to Gaza to Kosovo, Erdoğan has sought to position Turkey as an explicitly Muslim state and himself as the leader of the Muslim world.

The effects for Turkey’s religious minority communities — most notably its significant Christian community — has been devastating. Turkey regularly appears on human rights watch lists, often for violations of religious freedom.

The opposition has seized on this human rights record. The Republican People’s Party, the oldest political party in Turkey, founded by Kemal Atatürk himself, still holds onto its founder’s radical laïcité. İmamoğlu has been so vocal in his support of Istanbul’s Greek Orthodox minority that Erdoğan attacked him in a 2019 speech as a “crypto Greek” and his supporters as Greeks “disguised as Muslims.” An Erdoğan deputy has said there are “many questions” about İmamoğlu’s ethnic and religious identity.

İmamoğlu’s response to these attacks reflect his own commitment to pluralism and the Kemalist tradition, telling The Times, “If I were of Greek origin, I wouldn’t mind to say so… I also condemn people who think they are degrading someone by calling them Greek.”

RELATED: Why are American evangelicals not backing their counterparts in Ukraine?

But the fact that such a response was even necessary highlights what is at stake for Turkey’s religious and ethnic minorities and for the future of religious freedom. Erdoğan still envisions Turkey as a place that has no room for non-Muslim Turks, precisely because his personal opportunities rest on the existence of the quintessential “other” — and for the Ottomanist, that other is still, as it has been for centuries, the Greek.

If Erdoğan is allowed to triumph in his battle against the more tolerant İmamoğlu, the fate of Turkey’s minority groups will inevitably be a darker one. Its dwindling Christian community is watching closely as Ottamanist rhetoric and Islamic policies put them directly in the crossfire. The world must wait to see if the Turkey that emerges from this conflict is Atatürk’s pluralist and secular dream or an Ottoman-inspired authoritarian and nationalist nightmare.

(Katherine Kelaidis, a research associate at the Institute of Orthodox Christian Studies in Cambridge, England, is the author of “Holy Russia? Holy War?” and the forthcoming “The Fourth Reformation.” The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of RNS.)

Turkey and the neofascist contagion

By Gilbert Achcar

Published 28 March, 2025

First published in Arabic at Al-Quds al-Arabi. Translation from Gilbert Achcar's blog.

The events unfolding in Turkey since last Wednesday are extremely serious: they constitute a new and very dangerous step in the country’s slide towards the suffocation of democracy. The arrest of Ekrem Imamoglu — the popular mayor of Istanbul and candidate of his party, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), to the next presidential election scheduled for 2028 — and the detention of nearly 100 of his collaborators in the municipality of Turkey’s largest city, on charges that combine corruption (the Turkish judiciary should have better investigated corruption in Erdogan’s entourage, starting with his son-in-law) and links to “terrorism”, i.e., contact with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, PKK (at a time when the government is negotiating with this party for a peaceful settlement), is behaviour straight out of the familiar playbook of dictatorships. 

If anyone had any doubt that the charges were fabricated and that the intent was to eliminate the strongest opposition figure to the rule of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who seems determined to rule his country for life like other autocratic rulers, Istanbul University’s decision to invalidate Imamoglu’s degree on the eve of his arrest leaves no room for doubt. A university degree is one of the requirements for running for president in Turkey, and the university’s decision was based on a completely flimsy pretext, especially since Imamoglu received his degree thirty years ago!

Almost a year ago, in the aftermath of the last municipal elections in Turkey, I recalled Erdogan’s role in establishing democracy in his country during the first decade of his rule. Despite his subsequent autocratic drift, including by dismissing those leaders of his party whom he perceived as rivals, I praised his acknowledgement of his party’s defeat in the municipal elections, which distinguished him from several neofascists who do not accept defeat, including Donald Trump who tried to overthrow the electoral process that took place in the autumn of 2020, and still refuses to acknowledge his loss, claiming that the presidency was stolen from him (“Two Valuable Lessons from the Turkish Elections”, 2 April 2024, in Arabic only). 

The moral of this story is that the same man who began his political career with a courageous struggle against a dictatorial regime, and who, during his tenure as mayor of Istanbul, suffered what is very similar to what he is now inflicting on his opponent, the current mayor — this man, who played a commendable role in establishing democracy in his country, has been led by the intoxication of power and the enjoyment of a great popularity, to desire to perpetuate this condition, even if by imposing it coercively at the expense of democracy. And yet, until last year, Erdogan did not cross the qualitative red line separating the preservation of a margin of freedom that allows democracy to survive, albeit with increasing difficulty, and encroaching upon this margin in a dictatorial manner.

This was despite the fact that Erdogan exhibits some neofascist characteristics, by relying on an “aggressive, militant mobilization of [his] popular base” on an ideological ground that incorporates some of the key components of far-right ideology, including nationalist and ethnic fanaticism against the Kurds (in particular), sexism, and hostility, in the name of religion or otherwise, to various liberal values (see “The Age of Neo-Fascism and Its Distinctive Features”, 4 February 2025). His current drift suggests that he is now completing his adherence to the ranks of neofascist regimes with regard to their stance on democracy. In the aforementioned article, I described this stance as follows: “Neofascism claims to respect the basic rules of democracy instead of establishing a naked dictatorship as its predecessor did, even when it empties democracy of its content by eroding actual political freedoms to varying degrees, depending on the true level of popularity of each neofascist ruler (and thus his need or not to rig elections) and the balance of power between him and his opponents.” 

There are two main factors behind Erdogan’s drift towards neofascism. The first is that the neofascist temptation increases whenever an authoritarian ruler faces rising opposition and fears losing power by way of democracy. Vladimir Putin provides an example of this in that his drift intensified when he faced rising popular opposition upon his return to the presidency in 2012 (after a charade of transferring to the prime ministership in compliance with the constitution, which at the time prohibited more than two consecutive presidential terms). At the same time, Putin resorted to inciting nationalist sentiment towards Ukraine (in particular), just as Erdogan later did towards the Kurds. 

The second, and crucial, factor is the rise of neofascism to power in the United States, represented by Donald Trump. This has provided a powerful incentive for the strengthening of various forms of actual or latent neofascism, as we clearly see in Israel, Hungary and Serbia, for example, and as we will increasingly witness globally. The strength of the neofascist contagion is proportional to the strength of the main neofascist pole: the fascist contagion was greatly strengthened, particularly on the European continent, when Nazi Germany’s power went on the rise in the 1930s. The neofascist contagion has become even stronger today, with the United States shifting from a role of deterrent to the erosion of democracy, albeit within obvious limits, to encouraging this erosion, directly or indirectly. The erosion is already underway and accelerating within the United States itself. 

It is thus no coincidence that Erdogan’s attack on the opposition began following a phone call between him and Trump, which Steve Witkoff, Trump’s close friend and envoy to various negotiations, described last Friday as “great” and “really transformational”. Witkoff added that “President [Trump] has a relationship with Erdogan and that’s going to be important. And there’s some good coming — just a lot of good, positive news coming out of Turkey right now as a result of that conversation. So I think you’ll see that in the reporting in the coming days.” (Witkoff’s statement was made two days after Imamoglu’s arrest, even if he was not necessarily referring to that arrest.) Moreover, Erdogan believed he has succeeded in neutralizing the Kurdish movement through recent compromises, which were blessed by his allies of the Turkish nationalist far right themselves (he was proved wrong: the Kurdish movement came out in support of the opposition and the popular protest). He also believes that the Europeans need him, and his military potential in particular, at this critical juncture for them, so that they would not exert any real pressure on him. 

What remains a source of hope in the Turkish case is that Erdogan is facing a popular backlash far beyond what he apparently anticipated. This mass backlash is far greater than what Putin faced in Russia, where the popular movement was atrophied after decades of totalitarian rule. It is far greater than what most of the pioneers of neofascism have been confronted with, including Trump, who has met only very weak opposition from the Democratic Party since his second election. Erdogan is attempting to quash the popular movement by escalating repression (the number of detainees is approaching 1,500 in a country with a prison population of 400,000, including a high percentage of political prisoners and many journalists) at the expense of Turkey’s security, stability, and economy (the Central Bank was forced to spend $14 billion to avoid a complete collapse of the Turkish lira, and the stock market has experienced a sharp decline). 

The ongoing battle in Turkey has become increasingly significant for the entire world. Either Erdogan succeeds in eliminating the opposition, which could require a bloody crackdown similar to Bashar al-Assad’s suppression of the Syrian popular uprising in 2011, thus risking the country’s slide into civil war, or the popular movement will prevail, causing him to backtrack or fall one way or another. If the Turkish popular movement wins, its victory will have a significant impact in galvanizing resistance to the rise of neofascism worldwide.

Turkey: Defend democracy and the rule of law!

MARCH 27, 2025

By Fatma Nur Yoğuran

The cancellation of the diploma of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu and his subsequent detention have had a wide repercussion on the public and have led to widespread protests across Turkey. This has created a strong social demand that the principles of democracy and the rule of law must be protected.

Ekrem İmamoğlu is the elected Mayor of Istanbul and a key figure in Turkey’s democratic opposition, who rose to prominence after winning the 2019 municipal elections, defeating the ruling party’s candidate twice, despite significant pressure and interference.

On 19th March 2025, İmamoğlu and over 100 associates were detained by Turkish authorities. His detention is another clear sign of Erdoğan’s deepening autocracy. The Turkish government is silencing opposition voices and dismantling democratic institutions step by step. İmamoğlu represents millions who demand change, justice, and democracy. His arrest is not just about one man — it is about the right of an entire nation to be heard.

“These allegations are politically motivated and baseless,” İmamoğlu’s Legal Team have stated. Critics view the arrest as an attempt to eliminate political rivals ahead of the 2028 elections.

In light of these developments, the Republican People’s Party (CHP) has announced that it will hold a widely attended rally in Maltepe, Istanbul, on Saturday, March 29th, at 12:00. The rally aims to defend democracy, support Ekrem İmamoğlu and increase social awareness against the recent negative action. Attending this rally is a significant opportunity to demonstrate your commitment to democracy and the rule of law, strengthen social solidarity, and make your voice heard against the negativities that are being experienced. Everyone’s contribution is valuable towards Türkiye becoming a more just and democratic country.

London Protest Against Erdoğan’s Autocracy: Stand with Ekrem İmamoğlu

Join us this Saturday at 10 Downing Street at 4pm to protest the unjust arrest of Ekrem İmamoğlu.

Why does this matter?

• Judicial independence is under threat.
• Voters will is being silenced.
• Democratic institutions are at risk.

The case against İmamoğlu is not just about one man—it is about the future of democracy in Turkey.

We, as members and supporters of the Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the Workers’ Party of Turkey (TİP) in the UK, invite everyone to stand in solidarity with those resisting oppression in Turkey. Let’s raise our voices together!

 Fatma Nur Yoğuran is CHP England Youth Leader.

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Labour News Network report: Ismet Aslan released – Trade unionism is not a crime!

Trade unionist Ismet Aslan has been released after six months in prison. The trial will continue, but Ismet will not remain in detention.

Ismet was arrested on October 7th, 2024, along with fellow unionists Giyasettin Yiğit and Yusuf Eminoğlu, charged under Turkey’s anti-terror law, often used against unions and activists. In court, he stated, “I am not a criminal. I am a trade unionist,” explaining his actions as part of his union duties.

A LabourStart campaign helped raise global awareness, with nearly 5,000 supporters showing the power of international solidarity. The next hearing is on July 10th, 2025. We thank everyone who supported the campaign—your solidarity made a difference.

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Contact your MP to condemn what has been happening in Turkiye. At a time of  creeping dictatorship internationally, demand the UK government stand up and take action in support of democracy and the rule of law globally!

Image: University students sit beside anti-riot police during a protest in Istanbul after Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu’s arrest and imprisonment. (AP pic) https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/highlight/2025/03/25/crackdown-on-opposition-tips-turkey-into-financial-turbulence/ Licence: Attribution 4.0 International CC BY 4.0 Deed

Turkey: a mass movement builds against Erdogan’s power grab

Monday 24 March 2025, by Antoine Larrache, Uraz Aydin


Uraz Aydin answers questions from Antoine Larrache about the mobilization currently building in Turkey after the arrest of the mayor of Istanbul, who is seen as Erdogan’s main rival in the race for the next presidential election.


Can you tell us about the arrest of the mayor of Istanbul?

On the morning of March 19, Ekrem Imamoğlu, the mayor of Istanbul, was taken into custody along with around a hundred other mayoral staff on charges of “corruption” and “connection with terrorism”. The day before, his university degree (obtained 30 years ago) was arbitrarily annulled, with the obvious aim of preventing his candidacy in the next presidential election. Ekrem Imamoğlu, having twice won Istanbul’s municipal elections - in 2019 and 2024 - as a candidate for the CHP (Republican People’s Party, secular center-left), has established himself over time as Erdogan’s main opponent.

On March 23, the CHP was due to hold its “pre-elections” to decide on its candidate for the next ballot, normally scheduled for 2028 but most likely to take place earlier, to allow Erdogan to run one last time. Unless there is a constitutional change, which is also under discussion. The aim of this operation is therefore very clear: to render the main opposition candidate ineligible, criminalize his management of Istanbul’s mayoralty and perhaps even appoint an administrator in place of the elected mayor, as has been happening for several years in the municipalities of Kurdistan, in south-west Turkey.

Can you describe the mobilization in the face of this?

Today is the third day of mobilizations. Every day, the CHP calls for rallies in front of Istanbul City Hall. Tens of thousands of people are taking part. Of course, in addition to CHP members and supporters, all sectors of the opposition are mobilizing, including the radical left, against what has come to be known as the “March 19 coup”.

It’s worth remembering that the country has been living in an atmosphere of permanent repression since the Gezi revolt in 2013. The end of negotiations with the Kurdish movement, the remilitarization of the Kurdish question and the resumption of the war, the attempted coup d’état carried out by Erdogan’s former allies and the state of emergency decreed in its wake, the ban on strikes and the repression of the feminist and LGBTI+ movements are the main milestones in the development of authoritarianism articulated to the construction of an autocratic regime led by Erdogan. We are therefore in a country where mobilizations are rare, where the reflex to protest in the street has become quite unusual and risky for ordinary citizens. But despite this and the ban on rallies in Istanbul, there are major mobilizations and, above all, a spirit of protest that can be felt on the streets, in the workplace, on public transport, and so on.

On the second evening, in many parts of Istanbul and dozens of other cities, citizens came out to protest, with the main slogans “Government resign!”, “Down with the AKP dictatorship!”, “No individual liberation! All together or none of us”.

What is the scale of the mobilization among young people?

Precisely the most important and surprising element is the mobilization of university students. Universities have been depoliticized for years, radical left-wing movements are weak and their capacity for action is drastically reduced. So the current generation of students, while probably having grown up with stories of the Gezi revolt told by their parents, has almost no experience of organizing and mobilizing. This is true even of young revolutionary activists, who have not even had the opportunity to “do their job” in universities.

But despite this, through an “electric jolt” as Rosa Luxembourg1 used to say, a spontaneous radicalism is awakening in the universities. There are, of course, many social-economic (objective) and cultural-ideological (subjective) factors that come together to forge this mobilization. We’ll have to think about that later. But the fact that in a country that is becoming poorer, where it is difficult to find work, that offers no “promise of happiness” to young people, where years of study mean almost nothing on the job market, the fact that a diploma can be cancelled with a simple government pressure on the university is also an element that has probably contributed to achieving this jolt, in a sector of youth that was more or less predisposed to it.

What impact is this student radicalization having on the protests?

I think it’s shaking things up, and forcing the CHP to break out of its pre-constructed opposition patterns. As I said, CHP president Özgür Özel has called for a rally outside Istanbul town hall. But it has to be said that no serious preparations had been made to accommodate tens of thousands of people. The main objective was to call on citizens to vote in the pre-elections on March 23 and thus demonstrate Imamoğlu’s legitimacy against the regime, but also to continue the “fight” at the judicial level, by appealing, etc

Faced with this, the slogans most chanted by young people (who made up the majority of rallies in front of the mayor’s office) were “liberation is in the streets, not in the ballot box” or “resistance is in the streets, not in the ballot box”. Faced with this pressure from young people, who succeeded on several occasions in breaking down police barriers in front of universities, who marched en masse in Ankara to ODTÜ University and clashed with the CRS, who forced the police to send riot intervention vehicles to the universities (notably in Izmir), who refused to disperse at the end of official CHP rallies and wanted to march to Taksim (the historic symbolic site of resistance since the May 1st 1977 massacre to the Gezi uprising), the CHP leadership had to give in. Özgür Özel called on the people to “storm the squares”. “If obstacles are erected in front of us on the basis of an order contrary to the law, overthrow them, without hurting the police,” he added. Which is quite exceptional. Özel also agreed to install a second stand at Saraçhane, for the students.

How can we link this situation with what’s happening in Kurdistan, with the peace “process”?

It’s a very contradictory process, but one we’ve already experienced. Let’s not forget that during the Gezi uprising in 2013, when the west of the country was going up in flames, there were negotiations with Abdullah Öcalan, leader of the PKK. And of course, while the radical opposition to the regime usually came from the Kurdish regions, or from the Kurdish movement, this time their participation is naturally more limited. However, we saw that these two dynamics of contestation had converged in the candidacy of Selahattin Demirtaş, of the left-wing pro-Kurdish HDP party in the 2015 elections.

Today, while once again there is a process of “peace” according to the Kurds, of “disarmament” according to the regime (a facet of which can also be seen in the agreements initiated between Rojava and the new Syrian regime), the Turkish state is conducting a campaign of violent repression against the secular bourgeois opposition, journalists... but also against elements of the Kurdish movement. For the Kurds, the regime wants to show (above all to its own social and electoral base) that it still has its iron fist within its grasp, and that there is no question of negotiation but of “putting an end to terrorism”. As for the imprisonment of Imamoglu and other CHP mayors, if one of the charges is corruption, the other is links with or support for terrorism, since the CHP had forged an informal alliance with the Kurdish movement party in the 2024 municipal elections under the name of “urban consensus”.

Another surprising fact is that all demonstrations and gatherings in Istanbul have been banned except for Newroz, a festival celebrating the arrival of spring in the Middle East and the Caucasus, but which has acquired political-national significance for the Kurdish movement over several decades. So it could be said that Erdogan’s regime is trying to take another, decisive step in the construction of its regime, to reinforce its neo-fascist character by subduing the two biggest “chunks”, the secular bourgeois opposition represented by the CHP/Imamoglu and the Kurdish movement.

In the case of the former, by criminalizing it, imprisoning its representatives, perhaps forcing it to change its leadership and candidate, and finally destroying all legitimacy of the elections. As for the Kurdish movement, the regime will probably try to “de-radicalize” it, making it an ally at national and regional level (Syria, Iraq) in the hope that, in exchange for a few gains (of which no details are known at present), the movement will abandon its fight for the democratization of the entire country and guarantee a more peaceful existence with the regime. For the time being, the Dem Party (formerly HDP) has announced that it strongly opposes this “civil putsch” against Imamoglu and the other elected representatives, and that it is calling on the opposition forces to protest together at the Newroz rally on March 23.

Of course, we can’t anticipate the outcome of Erdogan’s two-pronged strategy, but as the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci once said, only the struggle can be foreseen

March 21 2025

P.S.


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Attached documentsturkey-a-mass-movement-builds-against-erdogan-s-power-grab_a8916.pdf (PDF - 899.5 KiB)
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Turkey
Turkey and the Neofascist Contagion
Turkish people will not accept the death sentence for their democracy
Kurdistan: ‘Turkey must choose between the status quo, endless war and peace with the Kurds’.
The Turkish State and the Kurdish Question: Contradictions and fragilities of a new hope
Sudan: Towards peace for warlords?

Antoine Larrache

Antoine Larrache is editor of Inprecor and a member of the leadership of the Fourth International

Uraz Aydin

* Uraz Aydin is the editor of Yeniyol, the review of the Turkish section of the Fourth International, and one of many academics dismissed for having signed a petition in favour of peace with the Kurdish people, in the context of the state of emergency decreed after the attempted coup in 2016.


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