The earthquake that hit southern Turkey and northern Syria last night with a magnitude of 7.8 will go down in the books as a severe one for the region. Just as the Dutch grew up with the threat of the water, Turks and Syrians have lived for centuries with the fear of the soil under their feet.
“It was night, the moon was shining, the monster came without warning, houses fell and people died, the city turned into a cemetery.” These lines of poetry from the beginning of the last century by Nâzım Hikmet – a well-known Turkish poet and playwright – could have been written this morning.
Due to limited historical records, it is difficult to estimate how many earthquake victims have fallen in Turkey over the centuries, but at least 85,000 people died there in the last century alone. This century there have already been 1500 deaths, not including Gaziantep and the surrounding area (where the death toll will certainly rise after last night’s quake). Some of the deadliest earthquakes in recent Turkish history include the 1999 Izmit earthquake, which claimed more than 17,000 lives, and the 2020 Elazığ earthquake, which resulted in 41 deaths and 1,607 injuries.
The main focus now is on the Izmit earthquake. It started in the middle of the night and lasted 37 seconds. 17,000 people couldn’t tell the story. To give an idea of the material damage caused by an earthquake of that magnitude: 66,000 homes and 11,000 businesses were destroyed in and around Izmit. Three months later, the Turkish government had cleared all the rubble from 10,000 buildings. Many people left the area, which is now threatening to happen. At the time, international solidarity was enormous. Aid came from 80 countries and more than 400 doctors and nurses were flown in. Several countries have already offered help, including the Netherlands.
Stuck in the rubble
Just across the border, in Syria, historians have reported massive earthquakes over the centuries. That of Aleppo in the year 1138 killed 230,000 people. Two centuries earlier, 20,000 people died in Damascus.
Follow all developments surrounding the current quake in our live blog
Opposition-controlled regions on the Syrian side of the border have now been hit, the British newspaper said The Guardian. Some four million people live here who had previously fled other parts of Syria because of the civil war. The buildings in which these people lived were already vulnerable, as they had been partly destroyed by bombing. Aid agencies say hundreds of families are trapped in the rubble and hospitals are unable to cope with the huge number of injured.
According to a reporter for the Arab news channel Al Jazeera, rescuers are making frantic efforts to pull people out of the rubble. “Every ten minutes they take a body out. We heard cheers from people above the rubble; the rescuers had found a baby who appeared to be alive.” The child was rushed to hospital. According to witnesses, medical aid in the area is “already exhausted” by the protracted war in Syria. People are treated in hospitals, even in corridors, and there is a shortage of blood. According to the latest reports, 467 people have been killed and 1,042 injured in Syria.
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