I N T E R N AT I O N A L
FATE HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH IT
Tens Of Thousands Still Under Rubble As Death Toll Of Turkey-Syria Earthquakes Climb SERGE JORDAN, ISA The scenes of the aftermath of the 7.8 and 7.6 magnitude earthquakes that struck wide swaths of Turkey, Syria, and Kurdistan in the early morning of Monday, February 6, were harrowing. If that weren’t enough, after two weeks of thousands of aftershocks, another 6.4 magnitude earthquake struck again on February 20. At the time of writing, the death toll has surpassed 46,000, and tens of thousands are still unaccounted for, trapped under the rubble as the Turkish government officially ends its rescue operation. As the areas affected in Syria are mostly war zones split between factions, the official death toll on the Syrian side is unreliably approximate. Tens of thousands of people have been injured, and millions left without homes trying to survive in subzero winter temperatures, often with no access to electricity, gas, clean water, or food. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that as many as 23 million people have been directly impacted by the earthquakes. Mixed with grief and despair, rage is mounting at the authorities on both sides of the border for their responsibility for, and appalling response to, the disaster. “Everyone is getting angrier by the minute,” said a man from Sarmada, a town in Syria’s Idlib province, as people have been left to fend for themselves. In most areas of Turkey, no rescue team arrived during the first critical 24 hours after the quakes. Protests by earthquake victims have since been reported in some badly-affected localities, like in Adıyaman and in Ordu. Turkey’s President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has blamed the delays on the damaged roads and airports; but that serves only to hide his regime’s own culpability in this situation. Hatay Airport, whose runway has been split MARCH 2023
into two and made unusable by the earthquakes, was built on the Amik Plain, a tectonically active area, despite repeated warnings from environmental activists and protests by local residents. After a massive earthquake struck northwestern Turkey in 1999, an “earthquake tax” was introduced, supposedly to develop disaster prevention and emergency services and avoid similar tragedies in the future. But no one fully knows where that money went and, notwithstanding the tireless efforts of rescue workers, it is obvious that the state itself was awfully unprepared despite the region being a prime candidate for seismic events of that type. To add insult to injury, volunteering individuals, civil society organizations, aid groups, and assistance from oppositionrun cities were also prevented from getting involved in the rescue efforts because of bureaucratic hurdles imposed on them by AKP government officials.
Corporate Profiteering At The Heart Of The Problem Erdogan has blamed “fate’s plan” for the scale of the disaster. Although Monday’s earthquakes were the most powerful in the region since 1939, the scale of human and material destruction has nothing to do with fate, nor is it natural. “In the study of geohazards we have a saying, which is that earthquakes don’t really kill people – buildings do,” said Carmia Schoeman, master’s degree holder in landslide geology, and member of WASP (ISA in South Africa). She explains, “For many decades, the science and technology has existed to not only predict the areas that would be worst hit by such events, but also how to minimize the damage caused through earthquake-proof construction of buildings.” After the 1999 disaster, Turkey introduced
opposition-held areas hit by the earthquakes barely a few hours after the disaster. Twelve years of war in Syria, fueled by Assad’s regime as well as multi-sided imperialist interventions, had already left the country’s infrastructure and people’s housing conditions in tatters. Nearly one-third of the homes in Aleppo and Idlib had already been damaged or destroyed by the war, 70% of the population was in need of aid, and 2.9 million were at risk of starvation across the country even before the earthquakes made a horrific situation compellingly worse. Millions of Syrians have been displaced multiple times by the war and now, many more will be displaced by this disaster. Almost immediately after the earthquakes hit, several Western governments mobilized aid and rescue teams to Turkey, but they offered very little or nothing to Syria. Victims of the earthquakes are paying the price of the ongoing power struggle between Western imperialism and the Syrian dictatorship; both are playing with people’s lives to boost their power and prestige. U.S.-imposed economic sanctions impede the shipment of aid to the affected zones, whereas the regime itself is withholding aid to rebel-controlled areas. Systemic corruption and price-gouging across the board are corroding further the chances of meaningful humanitarian assistance.
Cascading Disaster new building regulations for earthquake zones. But these regulations were at best A new layer of disaster will now predictvery lightly enforced, at worst ignored entirely, ably add on to the immediate effects of the while older buildings were not retrofitted to earthquakes. People who haven’t died from match the new standards. A regime-backed being stuck under the rubble are threatened building boom saw the proliferation of large by the cold, hunger, and the potential spread residential projects that were often delivered of diseases. As illustrated by a dam collapse with sub-par material and without proper in Syria’s Idlib province on February 9, furquality control, so as to maximize financial ther accidents are bound to develop out of returns for a few top real estate companies the current situation. with tight bonds to the ruling party. This tragedy epitomizes the utterly This building spree, facilitated dysfunctional and barbaric by huge state support and nature of capitalism. As it greased by large-scale coralways happens in this “As it always ruption to circumvent the type of mega-disasters, rules, became a cash happens in this type of big corporations are cow for these regimealso rubbing their mega-disasters, big corporaallied businesses. hands in greed while The construction and tions are also rubbing their hands contemplating the renovation of many opportunities to in greed while contemplating the public buildings like profit from people’s hospitals, schools, opportunities to profit from misery and death – post offices, and from cement compapeople’s misery and death.” administrative buildings nies seeing their shares were also subcontracted jump on the stock exchange via state tenders under the just after the earthquakes, to AKP government. While such some Western banks overcharging buildings should have provided safety customers to transfer money to Turkey. to the public in case of disaster, they were In contrast though, volunteers everywhere among the first to collapse —including the have rushed to help extract people from the headquarters of Turkey’s Disaster and Emer- rubble, donate blood, or collect basic necesgency Management Authority (AFAD) in sities to assist survivors. This instinctive Hatay. solidarity from working-class people provides Syria: Earthquake Effects Amplified By War But the callousness and cynicism of the ruling classes doesn’t stop here. On February 7, Turkish armed forces bombed homes in the Kurdish majority and earthquake-affected district of Tel Rifaat in Northern Syria, before people could even remove the debris from the quakes. The Syrian army also bombed
the seeds out of which, beyond the urgent assistance required to save lives, a movement could grow to demand justice for the numerous and largely preventable victims of this disaster. But this movement could also fight for a new society, one that puts people’s lives and safety at its core instead of profit accumulation for a tiny few, to make sure that such horrors never happen again. J
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