Turkey may hold the elections on May 14

Turkish Presidential Spokesperson said Turkey is leaning toward holding presidential and parliamentary elections on May 14, as President Tayyip Erdogan had previously announced, despite the massive earthquakes that struck Turkey on Feb. 6, killing more than 40,000 people.

In a televised interview with CNN, Kalin said that the final decision will be up to the high election committee “but right now, it looks like it will be on May 14.”

“There seems to be a tendency to hold it on time in May unless, some political consultation leads to another conclusion in the days to come,” Kalin said, adding that

the political parties could come together and agree on postponing it to June 18th, again.

Kalin said the election date depended on some technicalities in the earthquake zone.

“The high election committee will decide whether elections can be held in the affected areas in the 10 cities. We have more than 2 million people that have moved out of the area. How will they be able to vote on the places in which they will be on election day?” he asked.

When asked if the government was adequately prepared to the earthquake, Kalin defended saying Turkey has never seen anything like this.

“It created a lot of logistical problems on the ground. But we're dealing with the devastation right now. We're providing all this help,” he said.

According to Kalin, Turkey is now planning to build the first 200,000 new earthquake resistant houses over the next year.

“The work has already begun. The next couple of weeks we will be seeing more work being done for the people.

When asked the amnesties for the irregular building contributed to the scale of the catastrophe, Kalin blamed the “culture:”

“It's also a matter of a culture of understanding. And everybody following these guidelines and regulations, individuals, constructors, private sector, municipalities, center of government, everybody. I think we all are learning really great lessons, very costly and sad but great lessons from all this.”