Earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, droughts, and heat waves are acts of nature. But the social devastation that usually accompanies them are not. The horror visited on the people of Turkey - with an earthquake toll of tens of thousands killed, 200,000 left homeless, and millions exposed to disease - is a class question.
No government public relations or media blather could hide the naked reality of life under capitalism in this situation: working people living in shoddily built apartment complexes were killed. The rich and well-heeled were secure in their fine houses. All governments have revealed by their response what social class they look after. Washington, the richest state in the world, responded not with generous material aid (a measly 3,500 tents) but by sending in its military: three warships and 3,100 U.S. marines and Navy troops! One need not be a military strategist to know the U.S. government will use this armed deployment to further its own interests in the region - to try to keep rebellious working people in check, and as leverage against its imperialist rivals in Europe and elsewhere.
Likewise, the capitalist government in Ankara responded by quarantining the quake-ravaged area, gave virtually no emergency assistance for several days, and beefed up army troops in that region. Meanwhile, it continues plans to gut pensions and social security in order to make payments on Turkey's foreign debt to imperialist bankers and meet the demands of the International Monetary Fund to receive further multibillion dollar loans.
Rickety apartment buildings collapsed not due to a conspiracy or because Turkish government officials are particularly corrupt, but because of the normal workings of capitalism. The construction bosses simply acted like all capitalists do everywhere - they used cheap materials and cut corners on safety to maximize their profits. Workers' lives, unlike their own, do not weigh much in their monetary calculations.
As Fredrick Engels wrote in The Housing Question, "It is perfectly clear that the [capitalist] state as it exists today is neither able nor willing to do anything to remedy the housing calamity. The state is nothing but the organized collective power of the possessing classes, landowners, and the capitalists, as against the exploited classes, the peasants and workers.... As long as the capitalist mode of production continues to exist it is folly to hope for an isolated settlement of the housing question or of any other social question affecting the lot of the workers. The solution lies in the abolition of the capitalist mode of production and the appropriation of all the means of subsistence and instruments of labour by the working class itself."