A powerful earthquake struck northwestern Turkey in 1999, killing more than 17,000 people, exposing government incompetence and fuelling an economic crisis.

Amid the turmoil, a young, charismatic politician rode a wave of public anger to become Prime Minister in 2003. That politician was Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Now, as President, Erdogan faces challenges similar to those that brought down his predecessors — posing what is perhaps the greatest threat of his two decades in power to his political future.

The deadliest earthquake to strike Turkey in almost a century killed at least 20,000 people this past week, with the bodies of countless others still buried in the rubble. It hit after a year of persistently high inflation that has impoverished Turkish families, leaving many with scarce resources to bounce back.

The quake’s aftermath has highlighted how much Erdogan has reshaped the Turkish state, analysts said.

Critics accuse him of pushing the country toward autocracy by weakening civil rights and eroding the independence of state institutions, like the foreign ministry and the central bank. And in a series of moves aimed at undercutting his rivals and centralising control, he has restricted institutions like the army that could have helped with the earthquake response while stocking others with loyalists.

Erdogan admitted on Friday that his government’s response to the disaster had been slow, and anger was building among some survivors, a sentiment that could hamper his bid to remain in power.

“I have been voting for this government for 20 years, and I’m telling everyone about my anger,” said Mikail Gul, 53, who lost five family members in a building collapse.

“I will never forgive them.” The President, who faced harsh criticism in 2021 over his government’s failure to control disastrous wildfires, has long portrayed himself as a leader in touch with the common citizen. He visited communities hit hard by the quake in recent days.

Dressed in black, his face grim, he visited the wounded and comforted people who had lost their homes and emphasised the magnitude of the crisis.

“We are face to face with one of the greatest disasters in our history,” he said on Friday during a visit to Adiyaman province. “It is a reality that we could not intervene as fast as we wished.”

The 7.8 magnitude earthquake — the most powerful in Turkey in decades — and hundreds of aftershocks toppled buildings along a 250-mile long swathe in the south.