DISASTER-TURKEY: People’s Crisis Management Proves Effective

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Nadire Mater

IZMIT, Northwest Turkey, Sep 3 1999 (IPS) - Amid aftershocks, the survivors of this month’s earthquake are striving to rescue the remnants of their past and decide their future. Retaking control of their lives is their first task.

Izmit, the epicentre of the August 17 earthquake, was shaken again this week by two successive shocks of 5.1 and 4.6 degrees (Richter scale) killing one people and injuring hundreds. They also reminded everybody that their lives have to somehow continue.

“I have lost everything – my house, my belongings, all what I had earned in twenty years,” says schoolteacher Hasan Sepici (43) from Degirmendere district, on the south side of the Izmit Bay area.

“My wife and I recall the days when we had just married. It was just like now… So, as we are on the threshold of a new life, we’re asking ourselves whether we should revise our marriage too. Maybe we should part ways now,” he says.

He reflects the pains of survivors, whose overwhelming anxieties are not being met with any firm answers by the Turkish government.

In his visit to the quake-ridden cities of Bolu and Sakarya this week, prime minister Bulent Ecevit was wooed by angry citizens. “All your losses will be compensated soon,” he promised from his bus,” but to no avail. “Liar”, he was told.

The panic and urgencies of the first days have now been replaced by anxiety for the future. Some 14,000 victims have been identified, but it is the survivors who have now to decide what to do.

Many are going back to the poor villages they had left in search of a better future.

Many are still stuck in their neighbourhoods and streets, standing across tilted or cracked buildings or heaps of rubble that were once their homes. Among the debris they are desperately looking for photographs, toys, or any household effect that will tie them to their lost lives.

“I have taken my family to relatives in a nearby district…Now I’m trying to save some linens,” says retired schoolteacher Sinasi Tuncer, from the Derince district of Izmit, repeating a Turkish proverb: “Belongings are chips of your life.”

Rescuing things from the debris has become an income source for those – mostly Kurds – willing to risk their lives – and defy the authorities – into the demolished buildings to bring back some furniture or dishes to their owners.

“Home-to-home good carriage,” reads a paper placard attached to a nylon shelter, put there by a hungry entrepreneurial soul.

“Sure we are scared of working in these half-demolished buildings,” says one of the porters, “yet, this is how we earn our bread now,” happy to see a new client, the schoolteacher.

Notorious for their late and sluggish rescue efforts, the members of the provincial welfare, environment, civil defense and health departments’ emergency units still creep in their tents on the Governor’s Hall’s garden.

“In the second day after the quake, I organised an open air kitchen to serve lunch and dinner for 400 people,” says architect Tahir Gokmen, who transferred cooking facilities and personnel from his private school in the Kayseri province, 400 kilometres to the south of Izmit.

“Funny, they (officials) barred us. They said we were causing ‘visual pollution.’ They forced us to move to this entrance in a back street, but people cannot find us here and we waste most of the food while the needful starve out in the streets,” he says.

A police officer who silently tries to swallow a plate of eggplant and rice intervenes: “What does visual pollution mean amid this great pollution of everything? I’ve been working for 25 years. My house is demolished, I had to send my family back to my native town but I am still on duty.”

Police troops from adjacent provinces have been deployed in the region.

They also have complaints:”I’ve not been able to take a bath for two weeks. I stink,” one police officer told IPS.

“The ministry of education already ordered to start the enrollment of a new batch of students,” complains teacher Bayram Yetkin, in the school where he had been serving for 13 years. But the school was razed – “Where am I supposed to school these children?” They haven’t even examined the building.”

The quake returned to the sea the pieces of land the Golcuk district had gained by filling up the shore. It swept parks and scores of seven-storey apartment houses built on recovered land, providing an unusual view of tree-tops and concrete boxes stretching out of the water.

“They filled the sea to gain extra space. O this weak ground they built seven-storey buildings, while the city master plan limited construction to three storeys,” rages Leyla Hanim, whose house lies there underwater.

Awakened by the disaster and by the in-depth coverage by Turkish media, the former residents are not resigned to their “fate” as some officials advise them to. They are busy getting technical information about what happened to their houses.

“In these two weeks all what has been done here was the work of the people themselves. I have not seen the state. Now it is time for damage control, but the citizens cannot do it, yet the state is still absent,” Alper Soylu, 19, told IPS.

The first step to a new order is to regain control of their lives, the locals are now convinced. In the Halidere district with a population of 5,000, local people have established their own crisis-management force.

“In the second day, when we were desperately sitting there in dark, those appeared,” Halidere mayor Adnan Kucukozer says, pointing to a group of volunteers from Istanbul.

The volunteers are doctors, engineers and university students, members of the socialist-leaning Freedom and Solidarity Party. In Halidere, most of the residents support mayor Kucukozer’s Islamic Virtue Party.

“We cooperate very well,” the Mayor says. “Initially we were suspicious of those horse-tailed and earringed young men. What could they do for us?”

But views have changed. Now food is regularly distributed twice a day, medical aid is provided in a special tent, a kindergarten has been already set up with help from volunteer psychologists and a field hospital provided by the Spanish government is directed to the area.

“Here the crisis-self-management desk is completely popular. It comprises not bureaucrats but locals and volunteers. Every night we review the day’s work and prepare for the next day,” Serap Kaya, a volunteer from Istanbul, explains.

“All work, from cleaning to supplies distribution, is done collectively. However, old age traditions are still at work here. Men sit down while women do most of the work,” she reveals.

The Turkish government, still under heavy pressure from victims, specialists and media, is announcing major housing projects and effective planning, while winter is around the corner.

Suspicious, in the entrance of the Golcuk district the local people have already raised a banner: “Let’s not let the fault line become a feint line.”