Just over two months ago Turkey and Syria were rocked by strong earthquakes. Nearly 60,000 people died in that disaster, another more than 120,000 people were injured. What is it like in the affected border region and beyond?
Volgens de de Turkse regering zijn nog altijd 275.000 hulpverleners in het aardbevingsgebied actief, variërend van koks in gaarkeukens tot aan psychologen en ingenieurs. Het plaatsen van tijdelijke (container)woningen en tenten gaat door, net als het ruimen van puin. Een terugkeer naar normaal is voorlopig nog niet aan de orde.
Ook buiten de getroffen provincies laat de aardbeving zich nog altijd voelen. In een grote stad als Istanboel maken veel inwoners zich zorgen over de veiligheid van hun appartement. In de eerste maand na de aardbeving kwamen al 140.000 aanvragen binnen voor een bouwinspectie.
In view of the elections on May 14, the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wants to speed up reconstruction. The government wants to build 650,000 houses. Half of these are to be delivered this year. According to Erdogan, construction has already started on more than 67,000 new homes. The first “village houses” should be ready around Eid-al-Fitr, the end of Ramadan in two weeks, the president said earlier this month.
When Erdogan makes an announcement, it does not always mean that work will start immediately. In March, he attended the laying of the foundations for a new hospital in the hard-hit province of Hatay. But a day later the piece of concrete and the armament became again taken away.
In order to build, huge amounts of rubble must be cleared. That doesn’t work well everywhere. According to the government, half of the rubble in the earthquake zone has been removed. In some areas, that means the debris has moved. In the town of Samandag in Hatay province were the past week protests. There, the rubble is collected next to a tent camp. Residents fear that there is asbestos among the rubble.
In the Turkish city and province of Kahramanmaras, debris from collapsed buildings is believed to be floating in riverbeds deposited while in Adiyaman, the rubble is thrown into landfill without inspection or investigation dumped is becoming.
Finally, there are concerns about the haste with which the Turkish government wants to restore the affected areas. An AKP MP said last Monday that housing in Antakya should henceforth be done on the outskirts of the city. “There we will build a new city”. The inhabitants prefer to see attention paid to a safe return to the city itself. This should ensure that the soul of Antakya, a multi-cultural, multi-religious place in Hatay, is preserved.
Since the two major earthquakes on February 6, information from Turkey has been better than that from Syria. As a result, few new details come out. This is partly because most of the affected area in Syria is under the leadership of rebels and opposition groups. As a result, many refugees from other parts of Syria also live in that area. These people are not always registered.
It is estimated that more than 7,200 people have died in Syria, but the real number is probably higher. For the reasons mentioned, there are also relatively few foreign observers in the area, which means that there is no accurate picture of the damage to houses and buildings.
In terms of damage and death toll, Turkey was more severely affected than Syria. In Turkey, the number of victims is approaching 51,000, according to government figures. The number of destroyed buildings stands at 313,000, while another 893,000 houses and other detached buildings were destroyed.
Thanks to the efforts of 32,250 rescue workers, including 11,500 from abroad, more than 100,000 people were saved. How many of them came out from under the rubble is not known.
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