Observations about the recent earthquakes in Türkiye and Syria

So I’m writing this post from scratch because it somehow erased itself while I was typing it, I apologize if there are some things I forgot to cover when writing it again.

I’m sure many of you are aware of the recent, devastating earthquakes in Turkey and Syria, but I want to raise awareness on the government response to these, and how help can still be given & is needed. Though these earthquakes have been devastating for both countries, I’ve had trouble finding reliable sources for news about Syria, but I’ve been able to directly observe the ones in Turkey, so I’ll be writing more about Turkey.

To begin with, Turkey is one of the most earthquake-vulnerable countries in the world, and this has been proven in the past. It lies on several fault lines, defined as a break in the Earth’s surface by Cambridge Dictionary. These geological structures increase the vulnerability of a country to earthquakes by a lot, and seismologists have been warning the Turkish government for decades at this point, that a devastating earthquake is soon to happen. The same thing occurred with the Istanbul ’99 Earthquake, where 18373 people died, 48901 people were injured, 285.211 homes and 42.902 workplaces sustained damages or collapsed entirely. Though you would imagine that more precautions would be taken now, and even though the public and some politicians have been protesting and essentially begging the government to make some changes such as engineering/architectural legislations, none of these actions have been taken. This earthquake was centered in Kahramanmaras, a city in Turkey, and two earthquakes with magnitudes of 7.7 anf 7.6 occurred with just hours between the two, the second one destroying what the first one hadn’t. The same president of Turkey who protested another earthquake that had occurred in the 90’s before his regime by saying “This wasn’t destiny, this could have been prevented with better management!” went on the news and gave a statement saying how this was “destiny”. Though it sounds outrageous, it was true. And in such a time-sensitive event as this one, there was the option to declare a state of emergency so that Turkish and other countries’ soldiers could be assigned to duty and help citizens who were buried under the rubble. However, the president essentially disappeared after the earthquakes, and only after 3 days, after many people had passed away due to hypothermia, blood loss or some other injury did he eventually declare the state of emergency.

It has gotten to the point where two celebrities with philanthropic organizations raised more money and gathered more help than the government itself, which has a practically unlimited budget and tons of facilities. It has gotten to the point where instead of the government helping in the announcements of those who are buried under the rubble but are still holding onto life, social media and citizens, celebrities have taken up such a work. Though it’s emotional how many people from doctors and nurses to teachers, crane operators and truck drivers have become one and have all made themselves useful, the government had the ability to save so many lives, because there’s only a certain extent of help that can be provided by citizens. And what did the government, or the president in specific, do? They shut down Twitter and Instagram, where people buried under rubble were tweeting their locations, where families and loved ones of those trapped under rubble were asking for crane operators, or search dogs, where people were finding family members. They also had the two celebrities that together collected over a billion Turkish liras of help arrested for “spreading false news” when they had reposted a post made by a government source, which they believed was naturally reliable. What is especially unbelievable to me is that politics and someone’s ideologies still played a role in their likelihood of being saved during this time. Because from the many cities which were affected by the earthquakes, the city (Hatay) whose majority supports the opposing party to the current regime, was where the most deaths occurred. It especially disgusts me that we know it wasn’t the earthquake itself that caused the most deaths but instead the faulty buildings. There’s essentially a “railway system” in architecture which ensures minimal damage to a building and its residents during an earthquake (or any natural disaster, really) that was invented by a Turkish architect called Mimar Sinan. I feel ashamed that the very principle invented by a Turkish person was utilized in Japan, in Chile and in many other places where earthquakes a 100 times more forceful than this one occurred and killed not even a quarter of the people who died now. And how do we know that the deaths weren’t due to the earthquake but due to faulty building? It was seen that after the earthquake, there were a few buildings standing. And one of those was an Engineer’s Center.

So, turns out, earthquake-safe buildings are not too costly or time-consuming to build when it comes to protecting yourself.

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It has come to the point where instead of asking for food, water, pads, diapers, and clothing, people have begun to ask for coffins so that their loved ones don’t have to be buried wrapped in plastic bags and blankets.

There are many other absolutely heart-shattering and disgusting aspects of these earthquakes and the government response that I’m sure I haven’t been able to cover, so perhaps I’ll do another blog post, but for now I want to skip to how these people can be helped.

I’ll address this in my blog post #24 because this one will become too long if I do so here.

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