“My name is Conscience. I am under the rubble in Turkey.” An essay that tells, in the voice of conscience, of the delayed aid, the soldiers who did not come and the rescue teams who arrived too late after the earthquake of 6 February.
My name is Conscience…
I am under the rubble in Turkey…
While no one can reach me, see me or hear me, I both see and hear everything that happens…
At first it was only a great bewilderment and fear…
Which, once the dust and smoke cleared, gave way to a growing pain…
I tried to be strong, to endure, to survive… I had no other choice anyway…
I listened to moaning for hours… I heard those crying over their wounds, mothers calling to their little ones and getting no answer…
And of course the tens of thousands whose silence drowned those left behind in screams…
Then the cold began to cut like a knife into my already bruised and battered body…
The falling rain and the blowing wind kept fanning my unending pain…
My name is Conscience…
I am under the rubble in Turkey…
In the first hours I wanted to hear sirens, sirens wailing mournfully that would make the feeling that help was coming grow in my heart…
I could not hear them…
I waited for hours, for days…
My eyes searched for Mehmetçik, the Turkish soldier… Mehmetçik, who stands tall beside his nation at its hardest times and binds its wounds…
I could not see him…
Mehmetçik, who once, in disasters, put into action the plans prepared in advance in his own area of responsibility without waiting for anyone’s orders… This time he could not leave his barracks without an order…
That night and the next day, I had said to myself that tens of thousands of soldiers must have been sent on their way at once as the first order…
It was not as I thought… They should have been beside the citizens, keeping public order, restoring order, I said…
They were not… They could not be… They were very late…
My name is Conscience…
I am under the rubble in Turkey…
Didn’t we have dozens of search and rescue teams set up after the Gölcük earthquake… Heroes who save lives in earthquakes…
Then I waited for them…
For hours, even days, I waited for many of them…
They were late…
Of course they wanted to come much earlier, but…
They could not come…
They were stuck on the roads… Caught up in bureaucracy… Defeated by the blizzard… They could not come…
And there were the mine workers, always at the front and in the leading role of the most dangerous rescue operations…
The miners in their white overalls who shine light into the darkness…
They could not come either…
Do you know why?
Because, although they were standing ready, they were not sent on their way… Thirty-six hours had to pass after the earthquake before they could strike the first sledgehammer blow on the rubble…
My name is Conscience…
I am under the rubble in Turkey…
It was a struggle for life and death…
Hundreds of thousands under the rubble, millions outside, we were all bewildered and angry…
How could we not be?
While I was going through all this, an AFAD (disaster agency) official was announcing on the very night of the first day: “At the moment everything is under control and every place has been reached!”
Access to Twitter, which hundreds of thousands of people were using to report where they were, was blocked…
The base stations set up on the roofs of houses went out of service after the collapses, and because the telephone and internet infrastructure broke down, communication could not be established for a long time…
Because the roads built by those they called “road builders” folded like paper in the earthquake, the arrival of search and rescue teams and aid was delayed, and long traffic queues formed on the roads…
The runway of Hatay Airport, built on the basin of the drained Lake Amik and already surrendered to floods before, became unusable at the first moment…
Those who should have repaired the runway so that aid could arrive as soon as possible got into a squabble with the other municipalities that came to help over “I’m doing the repairs, you’re not”…
Owners of vehicles carrying aid were stopped by the police at city entrances and threatened: “Put up an AKP pennant and we’ll let you through, otherwise turn back!”
TRT, which should serve all citizens with the people’s taxes, stayed silent during a live broadcast at a citizen’s cry, “Ask the officials why they left us alone here for 50 hours!”, and the broadcast was hastily cut…
My name is Conscience…
I am under the rubble in Turkey…
There were so many collapsed buildings that even who would be rescued was decided by connections… AFAD teams were hastily sent elsewhere from the ruins where people with no one to pull strings for them lay…
Then the President, who should be the state’s most embracing figure, came to the earthquake zone… Using the words “dishonourable, disgraceful, shameless” about citizens criticising the delayed search, rescue and aid effort after the earthquake, at the very moment when unity and togetherness were most needed, he once again divided and tore apart both society and our hearts, which were about to lose their last hopes…
Then looting broke out in the earthquake zone… Authority does not tolerate a vacuum… Where the state’s police and soldiers could not come, everyone set the rules as they saw fit…
But the law should still have been working, and looting could have been prevented with the existing laws and law enforcement…
Then a state of emergency was declared… For no reason… Yet the country had laws in force offering sufficient means to take all necessary measures in disaster conditions…
The concern lay elsewhere… Someone wanted to use a heavy hand… He wanted no one to raise their voice… He wanted no one to criticise him and no wrong practices to be made known to the public… The earthquake zone, where grieving people were struggling to survive, was to be turned into an open prison…
A huge prison where the law was suspended…
Then videos began circulating on social media of people in police and military uniforms… “Police officers” beating to within an inch of their lives people alleged to be looters… The law had once again been shelved. People with clubs in their hands had once again started applying their own law on someone’s behalf…
Unless someone who holds control of everything, runs every power as he wishes and has bound every institution to himself gave the order, no one could take a step, no one could take the initiative; everyone was afraid of that one man…
I am afraid too… But not of the one man…
I am afraid of the country being dragged, step by step, by his hand towards internal conflict…
My name is Conscience…
I am under the rubble in Turkey…
Set aside your political and personal interests and please, hear my voice at last…
Otherwise the psychological and social fault lines that have broken will leave the whole country under the rubble…
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