CHRIS McIVOR: Tale of two cities in aftermath of earthquake
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Chris McIvor, originally from Wick, has spent some time in Turkey as part of his role in the Middle East with the charity HelpAge International
Kahramanmaras is a city of around 600,000 people located at the foothills of a small range of mountains near the district capital of Gaziantep in eastern Turkey.
You can see it from a distance emerging from the dusty plains, minarets appearing first, then the rest of the city quaint and picturesque.
The first signs that something terrible happened here are the cracks in the walls of buildings in the outer suburbs and then an entire factory precariously perched at a crazy angle.
Next are the tents of numerous people in temporary settlements. Finally comes the flattened centre of the city, hardly a building left standing or undamaged. Even those that are still intact are empty, deemed unsafe by the local engineers and marked for demolition.
According to my colleague, who has worked and lived here for many years, much of the town centre will have to be rebuilt. By this time next year little of what was previously there will remain. Apart for the memories retained in the minds of its local residents, an entire physical history will have disappeared.
One small anecdote that he shared: Among the flattened buildings and now empty spaces of the city centre, there is one building that looks completely untouched, no crazy tilt, no cracks in the walls, no broken windows.
"Who do you think this building belonged to?" he asks. I suggest the army, or the police or perhaps an administrative branch of local government. It turns out, however, to be the office of the city’s municipal engineers. "Everyone is asking why they protected themselves and not the people they were supposed to serve."
I didn’t speak to any of the people living in tents who are waiting for new homes and a chance to resume normal lives where they can look after themselves rather than being dependent on others. They have been visited numerous times by local and foreign journalists and I imagine must be fed up being asked the same questions that are thrown at them.
What happened on the night of February 6? What family members did you lose in the earthquake? What hopes do you have for your future? What next?
I do not think they need to be asked another time.
Of course, nothing will make up for the disruption they have faced, and the loss of family, relatives and neighbours. Fifty thousand people died in the earthquake in Turkey three months ago. Many more were injured.
But one thing I did remark to my colleague was the evidence of rebuilding – the numerous diggers, excavators, and cement lorries that are busy replacing what was previously there. On the roads into town the empty spaces are filled with stacks of building materials waiting to be used.
At least by next year a semblance of normalcy will have returned.
But across the border in neighbouring Syria, not so many miles away, my colleague reminded me, it is a different story altogether. They experienced the same earthquake as Turkey but, because of the conflict that has been going on there for over a decade, the effort of reconstruction has hardly begun.
According to him there is no army of trucks and bulldozers to replace damaged buildings. People are still living in houses and apartment blocks that are unsafe, fearful that one of the 16,000 (yes, sixteen thousand) aftershocks that have materialised in the aftermath of the big quake in February will bring them crashing down.
Earthquakes, floods, volcanoes and cyclones are bad enough on their own, bud add destructive human causes to any of them and the problems they create are multiplied many times.
Turkey’s people hope that by this time next year the tourists who went elsewhere will have returned to visit their country, the physical evidence of the 2023 earthquake removed and the stories of loss and destruction a receding memory.
"But the people of northeast Syria," according to my colleague, "harbour no such expectation. The evidence of what happened on February 6 will still be around them."
- Chris McIvor is the regional representative for Middle East/Eurasia. Turkey and Syria are countries that come under this region.
