At dawn on Monday, an earthquake measuring 7.8 on the Richter Scale rocked southern Turkey and northwest Syria. Its epicentre was in Marash in Turkey, and its shockwaves reached out for hundreds of kilometres causing calamitous destruction and killing and injuring thousands of people.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said as Al-Ahram Weekly went to press, that the number of victims could climb substantially over the coming days.
The head of earthquake research in Turkey said that this was the strongest earthquake to hit the country since 1999, while the country’s emergency services said on Monday that there had been 78 aftershocks after the main earthquake.
Turkey’s armed forces created an air corridor to deliver aid to the afflicted regions, having to find alternatives to airports in southern cities where runways had been seriously damaged.
The railway to Turkey’s southern Gaziantep Province had been damaged, and the Turkish Ministry of Education suspended schools for two weeks in provinces impacted by the earthquake. The Turkish government declared a Level 4 emergency, meaning that it is accepting international assistance after the disaster.
The EU quickly dispatched rescue teams to Turkey and vowed to assist by all means necessary. The Russian government said it would send 100 search and rescue personnel, and the Czech Prime Minister said his country would send a search and rescue team of 67.
Hungary immediately sent search and rescue teams, while the US, China, Israel, Iran, Egypt, Japan, France, Italy, Britain and others volunteered urgent assistance at all levels to assist in overcoming the calamity.
Erdogan said that 45 countries so far had said they would help in rescue operations in the wake of the devastating earthquake.
Meanwhile, across the border in Syria the catastrophe continues, as in the early hours following the earthquake in Turkey, the Syrian Ministry of Health announced that 250 people had been killed by the tremors in Syria and 650 injured.
The head of civil defence in areas under Syrian opposition control said that these numbers were accurate.
They are also likely to soar as a result of the freezing temperatures and snow in the afflicted areas, the lack of rescue teams, equipment and tools to remove the debris, and the hundreds of houses that collapsed on their residents in the cities and towns in northwest Syria during the earthquake.
There is a complete lack of fuel for equipment to clear up the destruction and widespread shortages of materials for hospitals and civil defence forces. It has been difficult to deliver assistance to northern Syria, and there is a lack of aid or countries sending help except for Turkey.
Saad Nadaf, a volunteer in the civil defence team in northwest Syria, told the Weekly that “it is a catastrophic situation. But we are fully coordinating with Turkey regarding assistance and rescue operations. Turkey has opened its borders to receive injured Syrians and transport them to Turkish hospitals. Medical shipments have also started to arrive from Turkey, as has some equipment to aid in the removal of rubble.”
“We are dealing with a calamity. Many regions have been devastated, especially the rural areas of Aleppo and Idlib. Entire neighbourhoods in northern Syrian towns have become heaps of rubble. The loudspeakers in mosques in northwestern cities and towns have not ceased announcing the deaths of entire families, not just individuals.”
The images, videos, and eye witness accounts coming out of northern Syria are truly terrifying, and the devastation has reached areas under opposition control as well as regime rule.
The Syrian Opposition Coalition has declared northern Syria a disaster area and called on the international community and relief organisations to urgently intervene to help the survivors in Syrian towns and cities.
In Damascus, Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad held an emergency meeting to discuss the damage caused by the earthquake and the steps needed to remedy it.
Rami Abdel-Rahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a NGO, told the Weekly that “entire buildings have completely or partially collapsed in 58 villages, towns, and cities in Syria. Most of them are in the northwest in areas under regime and opposition control.”
The areas under opposition control will likely see a steep climb in the number of victims due to the complete collapse of entire buildings, and a large number of victims remain under the rubble of buildings that were already damaged by the war and constant bombing over the past 12 years.
There are also buildings that were not constructed properly, a lack of disaster management agencies, serious shortages in medical facilities, and only a modest civil defence force that can barely meet five per cent of the help needed in afflicted areas.
The earthquake has thus exacerbated the already bleak and tragic reality suffered by many Syrians.
The US National Security adviser said this week that US President Joe Biden had instructed USAID and other US government agencies to look into Washington’s options to rescue the victims of the earthquake in Turkey and Syria.
USAID Administrator Samantha Power said she was very concerned about the earthquake that had rocked Turkey and Syria, which she described as the strongest in a century. Power said its toll of human lives would be catastrophic, especially among Syrian refugees. She said that Biden had given instructions to rescue and aid the victims.
French President Emmanuel Macron said he would send emergency aid to the victims in Turkey and Syria in the hope that this will alleviate the tragedy in northern Syria, already compounded by other calamities.
Many Syrian people were already suffering from hunger, the lack of basic services, abject poverty and outrageous prices before the earthquake hit. Nowhere in the region can be considered safe, as the infrastructure and buildings are flimsy and dilapidated.
Ironically, tents are probably the safest option for many in a country where millions live in tents in areas under opposition control.
Over the past 12 years, the conflict in Syria has caused immense destruction and loss almost beyond imagining to the Syrian people and economy. More than half of the country’s population before the conflict (some 21 million) has been displaced either inside or outside Syria, and the war has destroyed the country’s infrastructure and killed more than one million people.
The long conflict and economic sanctions against the Syrian regime have caused Syria’s GDP to dramatically shrink. The value of the local currency has dropped to record levels, with one dollar equal to 7,000 lira, in comparison to 45 lira before the conflict started in 2011.
Inflation has exploded as wages have eroded, and abject poverty levels have risen as it has become impossible to find shelter, work, healthcare, education, water, and other essentials.
Some 1.8 million people in the northwest of the country live in overcrowded refugee camps in below-freezing temperatures, and humanitarian aid arriving there is not enough for all. Across Syria, humanitarian response plans for the winter months have only received 29 per cent of the required funds.
Radwan Al-Debs, an economics researcher, said the Syrian government has “floated the local currency as the only solution due to the immense financial crisis, including the cumulative deficit in the state budget.”
“This essentially means the government has abandoned its duties towards its own citizens, such as subsiding fuel and bread and making prices the same as in the global market. There are also the sanctions imposed by the West and distractions from supporters of the Syrian regime with domestic problems of their own that make the economic crisis in areas under regime control even worse.”
At the end of January, the UN declared that 15.3 million Syrians, or 70 per cent of the population, need humanitarian aid. It added that the country faces a harsh winter, flooding, and a cholera outbreak, as the Syrian economy heads for collapse due to the devastating impact of the war in areas under both regime and opposition control.
More than half the infrastructure in the country has been destroyed, and 90 per cent of Syrians are currently living below the poverty line, while 70 per cent rely on foreign aid.
However, it seems that the worst is yet to come. There is little hope of progress on a political solution that could save the country and lead to reconstruction. The Syrian regime continues to reject UN Security Council Resolution 2254 as the basis for a political solution to the crisis.
The country’s middle class has almost completely vanished, and the country has lost the majority of its doctors, engineers, and skilled workers. Blackmail, corruption, and theft have spread, and last year illegal emigration rates from Syria to Europe multiplied. A devastating earthquake has now added to this list of calamities.
Conditions are expected to become yet more chaotic, with hunger, poverty, corruption, theft, and the influence of warlords being compounded by the physical destruction brought about by this week’s catastrophic earthquake.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 9 February, 2023 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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