The full extent of Monday’s massive earthquakes that ripped through southern Turkey and neighboring provinces in Syria won’t be known anytime soon. Seismologists say they are the worst set of earthquakes to hit Turkey in modern times. The death toll stood at more than 2,600 at the time of publication of this article and is set to rise significantly as hundreds, if not thousands, of people remain trapped under the rubble. As night sets in and temperatures dip under harsh winter conditions, the likelihood of their survival under flattened edifices will fade. And what of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan?

Even as tragic images continued to pour in from the disaster zones, some were already weighing the possible impact of the earthquakes on Turkish politics. The most immediate question is whether parliamentary and presidential elections will be held as scheduled on May 14. This will depend on two factors: whether the physical conditions for elections exist closer to the time, and whether Erdogan decides it’s in his favor to prolong the state of emergency declared after the first quake and postpone balloting beyond the June 18 deadline for holding polls.

Turkey is facing its worst economic crunch since Erdogan and his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) shot to power in 2002, with year-on-year inflation running at over 80%, the lira falling by 30% against the dollar last year and the country’s current account deficit ballooning to almost 5% of the GDP. The downturn is eating into Erdogan’s popularity, and opinion polls continue to suggest that the opposition might just be able to unseat him.

A key test is how the government handles what is arguably one of the biggest crises it has faced in office. The pathetic response of a ruling coalition government to the huge earthquake in northwest Turkey in 1999 was widely seen as a determining factor in the AKP’s rise. It didn’t help that the fiercely anti-Islamist military that ran the country from behind the scenes rushed to rescue its own first.