>> The response now is threefold.

One is about survival, secondly is about recovery, and thirdly is about blame, and that's going to play out in technicolor in Turkey.

♪♪ >> Hello and welcome to "GZERO World."

I'm Ian Bremmer, and today we are talking about the aftermath of devastating earthquakes that struck southern Turkey near the Syrian border.

We have continued challenges in coordinating humanitarian relief, and the region is still dealing with a monumental humanitarian crisis following 11 years of brutal civil war in Syria.

Making the problem even worse, financial strains in both countries whose leaders have fraught relationships with the West to put it mildly.

I'll talk about challenges in responding to all these crises and how to make sure the critical aid doesn't dry up once the world's attention moves on.

We have president and CEO of the International Rescue Committee, David Miliband.

And later, the Oscar-nominated director whose film tells the story of the man many say Vladimir Putin fears the most.

But first, a word from the folks who help us keep the lights on.

>> Major corporate funding provided by founding sponsor First Republic.

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Additional funding provided by... ...and by... >> A crisis within a crisis.

That's what aid workers have called the 7.8 and 7.5 magnitude earthquakes that rocked large pieces of Turkey and Syria on February 6th.

The scope of the tragedy has been overwhelming, though occasionally punctured by miraculous scenes like this one.

>> 17-year-old Muhammed Enes Yeninar and his 21-year-old brother Abdulbaki were pulled from under a collapsed eight-story building in Kahramanmaras on the 198th hour.

They stayed alive by eating protein powder.

>> And in a cruel twist of fate two weeks later, an additional 6.4 magnitude shock sent traumatized survivors in Turkey's Hatay Province, one of the hardest hit areas on February 6th, fleeing their homes once again for the safety of rubble-strewn streets.

As of this recording in March, the death toll in Turkey and Syria has passed 50,000 people.

The United Nations estimates that as many as 5.3 million people in Syria alone may have lost their homes, though it will be months before we know the true scope of the devastation.

The disaster is compounded by multiple crises in the region and the complicated relationships the country's leaders, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan have with the rest of the world.

First, there's the Syrian civil war, a conflict that's killed hundreds of thousands of people, displaced millions, and decimated northern Syria where the earthquakes struck.

Almost all of the area's 4.5 million residents are dependent on humanitarian assistance to survive.

Then there's the refugee crisis.

In 2010, before the war, Turkey had 10,000 refugees.

Today it has more than 3.6 million from Syria alone, many living in squalid camps that are already dealing with the cholera outbreak and freezing temperatures.

Then this financial turmoil unfolding in both countries.

Syria's stems from over a decade of civil war and Western sanctions, but Turkey's economic meltdown is of its own making.

The government's policy of lowering interest rates is creating runaway inflation.

Its currency, the lira, is collapsing, and the majority of Turks struggle to afford food and housing.

President Erdogan is also navigating a very complicated political environment ahead of the general election in May.

He's trying to avoid the pitfalls of his predecessor who was booted from office two decades ago in large part because of his mismanagement of an earlier quake that killed over 17,000 people.

What matters most now of course is expanding the flow of aid to the people in Turkey and Syria who so desperately need it.

But how much is leadership standing in the way and how to ensure that the help continues to flow long after the news crews go home?

I'm talking about all that and more with president and CEO of the International Rescue Committee, David Miliband.

David Miliband, great to see you on the show again.

>> Great to be with you, Ian.

>> So a bunch of things to talk to you about.

First, 50,000-plus dead from these horrible earthquakes in Turkey and Syria.

Talk to me a little bit about how aid is getting to the people on the ground that really desperately need it.

>> Yeah, thanks for keeping some attention on this three weeks after the earthquake because the great danger is that the world moves on.

You said 50,000 dead.

It must be at least double that.

I think that must be a huge under count, the 50,000 figure because you'll have seen the pictures that the rubble is still there and I'm afraid there are bodies still there.

But obviously there are millions still alive, four and a half million in the northwest of Syria under the control of armed opposition groups, opposition to the Assad regime in Damascus, and 15 million in the affected area across southwestern Turkey, part of an 80 million population of Turkey as a whole.

How does aid get to those affected?

Well, inside Turkey it's pretty straightforward.

It's within their own country.

But in the northwest of Syria, it's much more difficult.

We, the International Rescue Committee, my organization, has about 450 staff on the ground in the northwest of Syria.

We tragically lost two colleagues in the earthquake itself, and they are still waiting for cross-line aid.

And although there are two more cross-border points, we haven't really seen an increase in the aid flows.

We haven't yet had the full monthly figures, but the latest data I saw says that it's still very tough to get aid across the border.

>> And once it gets across the border, what sort of confidence do we have that the Assad regime will actually allow the aid to get to where it needs to go?

>> Well, very low for aid that's going into Damascus.

I mean, that's basically staying within government-controlled areas.

For aid that's coming cross border into the northwest of Syria, then it's out of the control of the Assad regime.

And the question then is, are you sure it's going to reach the people who need it?

And our experience, we've been in northwest Syria over the last 12 years, is that it does reach people in need and they make a real noise if it doesn't reach them.

Our own tracking but also our own client surveys show that what aid does come through, does reach them.

Obviously some of the aid we give is cash support, which allows people to purchase in the open market.

And there are commercial goods flowing across borders, but that really help you that much when it comes to medicines and some household appliances.

So the humanitarian situation was in crisis before the earthquake.

It's been doubled by it.

>> Yeah, you referred to it as a double crisis in Syria and of course when you talk about the environment for the Syrian citizens, especially those in the north, you've had all sorts of difficulty just in creating conditions for normal day-to-day life.

So it's hard to imagine what happened as a consequence of the earthquake.

>> Yes, if you're on the precipice and there's an earthquake, you're off the precipice and really you're in the lap of the gods whether you survive.

Frankly, survival is success for the next couple of weeks.

It's still cold, so winterization is one of the major needs.

There are enormous risks for some kids who've lost parents, obviously.

There's the danger that the World Health Organization have warned of a secondary crisis to do with disease, not just untreated injuries from the earthquake, but cholera returning.

There was a cholera outbreak in January in the northwest of Syria.

So it's a dire situation and you will know as well as I that the overall politics for northwestern Syria are as dire as the humanitarian situation.

It was a conflict zone as recently as January, bombing raids from Russian and Syrian aircraft; a shooting -- 150 civilians were killed last year in border skirmishes.

There's no UN process that's got leverage at the moment for the political situation.

Russia, Iran, Syria, and Turkey is really in control of the politics.

And if you live there, it's very hard for people to keep up any hope at all.

>> So let's move to Turkey where of course the majority of the casualties we know about, large majority, are actually located.

I want to ask you how much of this do you think was preventable?

There's been a lot of criticism of the fact that building standards were nowhere close to what they needed to be.

Was this something that corruption played a big role, poor governance played a big role in just how bad this crisis has become?

>> Well, I'm not a structural engineer, so I'm not going to claim expertise where it doesn't exist, and I can't say to you that I've been through all of the different planning permits and building regulations, never mind the architectural designs.

What you are obviously speaking to though is that Turkey had experience in the late '90s of an earthquake, which led to all sorts of promises about building standards, but clearly from the -- >> Also led to the ouster of a prime minister at the time, right?

>> That's a good point.

>> Who poorly handled it back then.

>> That's a very good point.

But you've obviously seen these buildings just absolutely cratering, and so what I can speak to from our -- We work through partners, just to be clear, in Turkey where it's not direct IRC delivery.

We're working through partner organizations, Turkish partner organizations through our office in Gaziantep, the center of the earthquake.

What we know is that there's been an absolute meltdown of the urban environment, and there's a lot of anger about that, understandable, as well as grief.

But I can't speak to you about corruption in respect to the planning permit system, but what we both know is that Turkey is just a few months away from an election.

And an accident and earthquake as grave as this and the response to it is going to play a big part in that election.

I'm presuming you think the election will go ahead as planned, but there are 10 million people whose lives have been turned upside down, so it's hard to see how they're going to vote and participate.

>> The first thing I thought of when I saw all of this outrage in Turkey is to what extent are we just seeing a government that just doesn't care the way it needs to about its own population.

And again, as you see tens and tens of thousands that are probably still dead under that rubble, it's just hard not to ask those questions.

The election's going to be very relevant.

>> Yeah, I mean, look, they're all voters, and Turkey is a functioning democracy, albeit one that's been highly centralized over the last 20 years, increasingly centralized.

But the response now is twofold, isn't it, or threefold in fact.

One is about survival, secondly is about recovery, and thirdly is about blame, and that's going to play out in technicolor in Turkey.

>> I want to talk about another tragedy.

This one playing out not just today, but over many, many years now, which is that of the migrant crisis in Europe.

Yet another boat death toll risen to 64 right now, lost at sea off the coast of Italy, what's being called, and I quote "the voyage of death."

We know that smugglers were charging some 8,000 euros apiece to get a ride on that boat.

And I'm wondering to what extent you agree with what we're hearing from European leaders that the most humane thing to do is to stop migrants from risking their lives in the first place.

How do you respond to these tragedies?

>> Well, I think that you have to respond before they happen.

The big picture is not just a European picture.

It's an American picture as well, which is that more people are on the move than ever before.

And more people are on the move for, if you like political reasons, not just economic reasons, political in the sense of they're fleeing persecution, they're fleeing war, or they're fleeing disaster.

And that's evidently true in Europe for people fleeing from the Middle East and North Africa.

It's true in the U.S. for people fleeing from the northern triangle of countries, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, but also 5 million refugees from Venezuela, et cetera.

And both Europe and America face the challenge of richer countries, which is how do you distinguish between refugees on the one hand and immigrants on the other?

A refugee is someone who has no home to go to.

An immigrant is someone who's choosing to leave their home.

How do you balance fairness with humanity to make sure that you are fulfilling legal as well as moral obligations for people who've been driven from their homes?

And how do you balance international responsibility with local responsibility?

My recipe for that involves the following elements.

Element one, you have to have fast processing of asylum claims.

If you don't have fast processing of asylum claims, America as an example, 2, 3, 4 years to process an asylum claim because there's a backlog of over a million people in the immigration courts, you can't do justice and you can't achieve fairness or humanity.

Secondly, those who are allowed to stay needs to be properly integrated into the society.

Above board, given training, given language, tuition, able to participate fully in society.

Those who fail the test obviously can't stay.

Third element of this is to recognize there's a very strong criminal element that's exploiting the absence of legal routes to get into Europe or America.

And in Europe we've got very good evidence of this.

There isn't an EU agreement on its asylum and migration package.

And so there aren't safe and legal routes to flee from persecution or disaster.

That just plays into the hands of the people smugglers, and I think they were in your mind in some of the way you phrased your question.

The fourth element that I think is important is that you have to have legal routes to asylum and to immigration.

The Biden administration has made a nod towards this in its pledge that 30,000 people a month from Haiti, Venezuela, et cetera, four countries in total will be allowed into the United States if they're able to register before they arrive.

And so those are some of the components that are necessary in addressing what I think is going to be the challenge for the rest of this century frankly, because we know from the data, the econometric data, that in countries of less than $7,000 a ahead, people are going to want to leave.

Interestingly enough, all European countries are doing well for Ukrainian refugees.

They're integrating them and they're giving them -- they've set the standard.

>> And I've heard that several million that went to Europe already in the first year have returned to Ukraine.

Do you believe that part of the success is because it's new and it's meant to be transitory?

Do you think that you'll start to see a very different story if this goes on for three, for five years?

>> Well, people were asking that six, nine months ago, and I think that the fear is that as weeks turned into months and months turned into years, there'd be a backlash.

That hasn't actually happened.

A country like Poland, which is bearing a huge share of the responsibility, people are still living in each other's living rooms.

There's still the support going on.

One factor that this brings out, of course, is that if countries don't share the burden, that is absolute grist to the mill of those who would want to exploit the situation.

And that's been a big problem in Sweden over the years, that Sweden has felt it's taking a disproportionate share compared to other countries in Europe, countries like France.

>> And it's affected Swedish politics, absolutely.

>> Exactly.

And so you've got to share out the burden.

You've got to share out the responsibility.

The 27 countries of the EU did that in the Ukraine crisis.

Now, you asked about people going back.

We have IRC teams, International Rescue Committee teams in the east of Ukraine as well as in Poland and Germany.

Here's what we're seeing.

There were six, seven, even eight million people who'd crossed at one point, but two or three million then went back last July, August, September.

However, some of those have now come back into Europe, and I think what we've got to get used to is people moving backwards and forwards as the war develops and as the front lines change.

Obviously it's asymmetric.

There's a intense trench warfare in the east of the country.

There's missile attacks from Russia elsewhere in the country, and the trauma associated with that is real for the women and kids who are obviously not conscripted.

They're the refugees.

To answer your question directly, there were a couple of million people who did go back to Ukraine last year.

>> So, before we close, David, I have to ask at least one question about Brexit.

I mean, we're years through this process and finally there is a deal agreed to on Northern Ireland and trade with the continent.

Are you in favor of the way that the U.K.

P.M., Rishi Sunak, has handled this, and can we finally actually close this chapter, this unfortunate chapter on U.K. history?

>> Yes, I do support the new deal.

It's not the first deal.

It's a new deal.

It's a more honest deal than the previous ones.

But no, we can't close the book because Brexit is never over.

It's a journey, not a destination, and it's forever in its impact, and it's still playing out because obviously Northern Ireland is, if you like, the apex of the problem because the Northern Ireland situation is so unique.

And because the Good Friday Agreement that we'll celebrate in April 25 years ago was based on the fact that Britain and Ireland, both Britain and the Republic of Ireland, the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland were both in the European Union and that's what allowed the Good Friday Agreement to say that those living in Northern Ireland could be British or Irish or both, and they could choose themselves.

That's been interrupted by Brexit, but obviously there are swathes of other aspects of national life where Brexit isn't working, and that needs to be addressed too.

>> David Miliband, we'll have you back.

Got to keep talking about it.

Thanks so much, man.

>> Thank you.

♪♪ >> Now we move from a global crisis to a much more personal story of adversity.

GZERO's Alex Kliment brings us an exclusive interview with Oscar-nominated documentarian Daniel Roher.

He spent months embedding with Putin's number-one enemy.

>> In August 2020, somebody tried to kill leading Russian dissident Alexei Navalny.

Here's how he describes learning that the hitman had used Novichok, a Soviet-era nerve agent.

>> Come on, poisoned?

I don't believe it.

Putin's supposed to be not so stupid to use this Novichok.

If you want to kill someone, just shoot him.

>> Canadian filmmaker Daniel Roher was there as Navalny and his team investigated the assassination attempt, pulling on strings that led them to the highest levels of the Kremlin.

His Oscar-nominated documentary "Navalny" is part thriller, part black comedy, and part family portrait.

I recently spoke with Roher about why he made the film and what he hopes Vladimir Putin will do if he sees it.

Let's start with the end.

You are about to go to Los Angeles for the Oscars.

Where is Alexei Navalny right now?

>> Right now, Alexei Navalny is in a small prison cell, solitary confinement, about six and a half hours outside of Moscow.

He has, for much of the last six months, been removed from the general prison population, so he is in specifically solitary confinement.

So Navalny is not doing well, and it's really our principle responsibility to keep his name in the global consciousness and use the film as a vehicle to keep him in the world's eye.

>> Well, how do you pitch a guy?

I mean, he's already got tens of millions of followers on social media.

He's a media master himself.

Why does he need a documentary film made about him?

>> A YouTube video is made and released and it exists and is gone and forgotten in two weeks, three weeks.

This film can be a weapon for you that's on a time delay.

If you tell this story right, people will watch this film and think about Navalny and his family not for the next day or week, but for the rest of their lives, and that's the power of cinema and that's the difference of cinema.

It has an emotional resonance that a YouTube video often would never have.

>> He's so adept at controlling messages, such an adept communicator.

Were you ever worried as a filmmaker that maybe you were getting spun or used by Navalny's team?

>> It wasn't that I was worried about it.

I was aware of it.

And I think because of his media acumen and his media savviness, he understood the value of what I was trying to bring to the table.

And it took a great deal of trust because one thing we were very clear on from the very, very first meeting is that Team Navalny would have no editorial control.

>> You said elsewhere that the experience of watching the film is a lot like what the experience of making the film was like.

>> Yeah.

>> What did you mean by that?

>> Well, so often people describe to me what it's like to see the phone call sequence, for example, for the first time.

>> The phone call sequence where Navalny tricks one of his would-be assassins into essentially admitting that they tried to kill him, right?

>> Precisely.

[ Dial tone ] >> Oh, my God, you ruined their day.

>> And to be in the room for that moment was just jaw dropping.

You know, I understood -- Even though I don't speak a word of Russian, I was on one of the cameras, I understood immediately that what we were filming was the most important thing I would ever film.

You could read the expressions and emotions on people's faces and just into it that this was crazy.

>> The West has a tendency sometimes to deify dissident figures in authoritarian regimes and sometimes we find out that they're imperfect heroes.

How well do you think we know Alexei Navalny and what he really thinks?

>> Well, it's very well documented that Navalny, in the late aughts and early 2010s Navalny went -- We see it in the film, him going to this rally, the Russian march rally, which is a rally for Russian nationalists and really unsavory, bad characters.

I describe them in the film as Sieg-Heilers and Nazi sympathizers and people like this, like really scary.

And I asked him about this and he said, basically, "You think I want to associate with these guys?

I'm trying to build a broad-based coalition.

I'm trying to take essentially the liberals in Moscow and whoever else opposes the regime.

If these nationalist guys oppose Putin, then we're on the same team right now.

When it comes to figuring out the public policy of how to govern a free Russia, that's a different discussion and I would never associate with these guys."

It's basically "the enemy of my enemy is my friend."

That's the political calculus he's making, and I can simultaneously understand it and be deeply uncomfortable by it.

>> If Vladimir Putin watches this film, what would you want him to take away from it?

>> My top of my wishlist would be to have him end this brutal, genocidal campaign and to take a dose of his own Novichok, do the world a favor.

>> How does Alexei Navalny's story end, do you think?

>> I think that Navalny has a life sentence.

It's just a question of whose life it is, his or Putin's.

For millions and millions of Russians, he's a very important influential figure.

But for probably even more Russians, they view him as a bad person, as a criminal, as all of these things that the propaganda shows talk about.

I hope he survives.

I hope he's reunited with his family, and one of my personal dreams is to be able to travel to Moscow one day and show him the film.

♪♪ >> That's our show this week.

Come back next week.

And if you like our show, or even if you don't, but you know that you have nowhere better to turn for the latest in global events, you should check us out at gzeromedia.com.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ >> Major corporate funding provided by founding sponsor First Republic.

At First Republic, our clients come first.

Taking the time to listen helps us provide customized banking and wealth-management solutions.

More on our clients at firstrepublic.com.

Additional funding provided by... ...and by...