Half a year ago, two devastating earthquakes shook 11 provinces in southern Turkey and several regions in northwestern Syria, leaving them in shambles. The biggest natural disaster in the last two decades in that region claimed the lives of more than 50,000 people and injured some 125,000, as well as thousands of displaced and homeless people who now await the progress of the promised reconstruction.
Six months ago the earth shook with such ferocity that it leveled buildings, cracked streets, and catapulted thousands of people under dust and rubble. Half a year after the devastating earthquakes on the Turkey-Syria border: dust, rubble, nameless tombstones and visible wounds on the walls of hundreds of homes, but also in the minds of Turks and Syrians.
During the early hours of Monday, February 6, two earthquakes —the first and most devastating of magnitude 7.8 on the Richter scale— hit several provinces in southern Turkey and northwestern Syria. The 82 million Turkish inhabitants fell silent with the creaking of the earth, remembering previous tragedies such as the 1999 earthquake, which left 18,000 fatalities in a country crossed by two tectonic faults, with a tendency to destabilize the surface.
“We could have prepared all of Turkey for an earthquake, not just Istanbul, if we had started working with the ministry to make our at-risk provinces earthquake resistant. If we had distanced ourselves from politics, if policies had not been left to the whim of the new administrations, and if there had been a serious and decided budget”, argued Naci Gorur, geologist and member of the Academy of Sciences.
This time, the biggest natural disaster in the last two decades in that region claimed the lives of more than 50,000 people and 125,000 injured, according to estimates by the Reuters agency; displacing thousands of people from the ruins that were once their homes and generating a humanitarian crisis that has not yet been resolved by the Turkish authorities. More than 300,000 buildings were damaged and, six months later, many neighborhoods and towns still do not have basic water or electricity services.
Two “stronger” leaders after the earthquakes
There were then just two weeks left for the Turkish president to call the first round of elections. One that took place ahead of schedule, despite the earthquakes, and that would give Recep Tayyip Erdogan another victory. Neither the devastation nor the criticism for the lack of foresight when building, for the irregularities in the constructions that did not have emergency measures in the event of an earthquake, gave the president a political bill. Instead, Erdogan promised during the election campaign a full reconstruction and new housing for those affected.
So far, the Turkish government has ordered inspections of damaged buildings both inside and outside the 11 earthquake-affected provinces. And he promised to compensate the victims with financial aid and the opportunity to resettle in public housing projects, but hundreds of those affected continue to live in precarious tents, while demanding faster action.
In northwestern Syria, more than 2,000 buildings collapsed and some 4,000 were marked as “unsafe”. This, in a region that already had poor infrastructure and hardly any basic services due to the internal conflict.
Despite this, the popularity of Bashar al-Assad, clinging to power for more than 20 years, was not affected either. Instead, used the earthquakes to clean up its image in the international community after 12 years of war in Syria. In this way, she took advantage of the tragedy to control the population through humanitarian aid in one of the few remaining rebel strongholds in the north of the country.
🇹🇷 at #UNSC meeting on #Syria:
➡️ The UN cross-border mechanism is the most viable, transparent and predictable method of aid delivery to northwest Syria.
➡️ This is not the time to risk the access of millions of Syrians to uninterrupted and predictable humanitarian assistance pic.twitter.com/jkgYEllYAz
— Turkish Mission to the UN (@TURKIYE_UN) July 26, 2023
Precisely, the reconstruction and access to international humanitarian assistance continues to be a challenge in northwestern Syria, in the Idlib region, an area controlled by Islamist groups and opponents of the Al-Assad regime. For a month now, the United Nations trucks that transported food, reconstruction material and medicines through the humanitarian access points on the border stopped arriving, despite the fact that more than 4 million people depend on this for their survival. .
In the midst of this new humanitarian crisis, added to the already precarious situation for the Syrian population due to more than a decade of indiscriminate attacks and fighting, Al-Assad and his ally Russia vetoed in the United Nations Security Council the resolution to extend the aid delivery. “Not only do we have six months since the earthquake occurred, but also one month since the resolution failed in the UN Security Council and on August 13 we have the expiration of the agreement for the other two crossings,” Jennifer Higgins warned. Coordinator of the International Rescue Committee.
Being born and reborn from among the ruins
The hours after the tremor, between screams drowned out by the dust and pain, there were moments of anguish and despair, but also of humanity. Rescuers, survivors, military or insurgents… all removed the rubble in search of life. The findings of young people, the elderly, and children alive were cause for celebration and encouragement. The world’s media focused on southern Turkey, a region that hosts thousands of Syrian refugees displaced by the civil war in their country, and northwestern Syria.
Amid the pain, they also celebrated the positive stories of resilience. Afraa was ten hours, still connected through the umbilical cord to her mother, under the cement and bricks in the Syrian city of Jinderis, populated by displaced people from the internal war. The “miracle baby” was born in the midst of the tremor that crushed her parents and four of her siblings. Six months later, recovered from her physical injuries, she smiles in the arms of her uncle. “We are very happy with her because she reminds us of her parents and her brothers,” exclaimed Khalil al-Sawadi, her adoptive father.
United Nations calculates that 43% of the injured are women and girls; and 20% are children between 5 and 14 years old. Many of them have managed to overcome their physical injuries, but the psychological consequences continue to take their toll on these vulnerable populations, without access to decent healthcare or treatment to protect their mental health. “My son is all I have left. He is the only thing that has allowed me to continue living. If, God forbid, Ibrahim had died too, I would definitely have died shortly after him,” says Jomaa Biazid, a Syrian father who He lost his entire family, except his youngest son.
Where do the millions of tons of garbage and debris left by the earthquakes end up?
Some excavators work against the clock in Hatay, the epicenter of the earthquakes in southern Turkey, supported on piles of cement, mud, cables and the remains of the elements that make up a home: electrical appliances, chairs, glass… While the cleaning crews they move all that useless material from one place to another, a cloud of gray dust envelops the city. Residents are concerned and are beginning to feel the aftermath of the toxic cloud. “We have survived the earthquake, but this dust will kill us with respiratory diseases and cancer, especially lung cancer. Because all these substances are very dangerous,” says Michel Atik, a retired geological engineer, founder and president of the Samandag Environmental Protection Association .
The UN estimated that the earthquakes generated 210 million tons of debris and more than 200,000 buildings in Turkey were demolished due to risk of collapse. With landfills saturated by the amount of waste extracted in recent months, environmental groups are concerned about the consequences for the health of citizens and the environmental effects of earthquakes. “In addition to asbestos, there is lead in paint and heavy metals in electronic equipment such as televisions and appliances. Of course, there is also mercury, which is a very harmful substance that has effects on the brain”, alarmed Ali Kanatli, representative of the Turkish Medical Association in Hatay.
The high temperatures registered in the last weeks are also hitting the survivors of the region, while new diseases proliferate in the makeshift camps where they live, also facing a lack of water. “Tap water is not drinkable, but people use it to wash themselves. The pipes burst every day and the power is cut two or three times a day,” explained a resident.
This is the panorama six months after the most devastating earthquakes in the Middle East in recent years. Once the media spotlights went out, international aid now arrives in drops; the authorities work more for their political image than for reconstruction and the civilian population, in mourning, feels abandoned and seeks a way to return to a daily life that is cracking like its walls.
With AFP, AP and local media
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