World Destroyed cities and children under the rubble: But everyone has already forgotten about the earthquake in Turkey. The survivors, mostly Kurds, were abandoned by Ankara. But besides them, there are also some Italian NGOs.

What happened on the night of February 5-6, 2023, when the ground in Turkey and Syria was shaken by a magnitude of 7.7 that has not been seen in 2000 years, is an unprecedented event. I have never experienced it. What a direct witness describes best possible is that he has “never seen and experienced it.” He was trapped under the rubble for 48 hours before we managed to get him out. Local people like him who have lost everything. “I don’t know what to tell you. What can you say about the Darkness?’ When we ask him how old he is, he says angrily, “I really have no idea.” The Kurd is definitely over 75 years old, those who lived with him, his peers say, survivors like him. Weeks. Weeks. A girl who moved to a small self-organized campsite a few months ago says, “There are tremors every day, look at this,” and many have. The damage was ridiculous. It’s gone. The young woman, who is Kurdish, like almost everyone else here, chose to stay with the displaced, both in the camp and in the geographical area. The hairdresser takes care of people every day. They go, they get their hair done, especially in the camp. Ladies, they also come from far away because it is the only hairdresser. There is no such thing as km. There is no service of any kind. Let alone a standing salon.

These are just a few of the many stories you will encounter when you cover a distance of just over 200 km that separates Kahramanmaraş from Samandag. The first, and named after the district, is located in the south of Turkey, but not too close to the Syrian border, actually in Rojava, the area where the Kurds fought and defeated ISIS and Turkey did not welcome them at all. Enough to attack them every day, especially in Afrin and its canton, or in Idlib, the most controversial city of the entire conflict in Syria. It is the main hub that controls both Assad’s country’s only access to the sea and the routes to Raqqa, Damascus, and the northeast. The earthquake shattered all the neighborhoods of cities like Defne, which is right next to these areas. Citizens staying here either stay in tents or the luckier ones stay in housing containers. There is almost nothing around them anymore. Another Kurdish teacher said that he did not go, “because there is no school anymore, there is a real need for me. And boys and girls living in the camp with their families never felt the need to go to school as they do now. Even if the building isn’t there.’ He points out that mostly houses and buildings that are not even twenty years old are demolished. “On the other hand, the houses of forty years ago somehow withstood the blow”.

Are they not helping us because we are Kurds?

We are in a park where tents are set up. And housing containers, really. However, the teacher lives with a friend and two women under the age of thirty in a cafe in the middle of the public garden. It’s a low, circular building, a de facto bar. They serve tea, actually chai and Turkish coffee in addition to what’s there. It could be anything. You don’t pay «What do you want, we pay? “It seems to me we pay enough already,” says the young woman who runs the bar. “The owner told us to stay here, it’s safer here.” Behind us, apartments with a ghostly appearance, about to be demolished. “Because we are Kurds, we do not want it to be a political choice not to help us. The earthquake took away, I’m talking about the survivors, at least half a million eligible voters. People whom no one, not even the Government, thought would vote for President Erdogan,” a lady of a certain age says sarcastically. Everyone is silent as he speaks. “The President is negotiating today to find a solution in Ukraine, to resolve a war. But here? Wasn’t there a war here? We don’t even know how many people died. We don’t know. Is it legitimate to think that he didn’t help us because he didn’t want to? True, the majority of people here are Kurds, since they exist in this country, but we are not the only ones. There are Armenians, and there are Turks who are understood as he understands it”, referring to Erdogan.

“We would all be citizens with the same rights, but it seems that the government does not hear us by ear. Nobody has come here, but this is an important city. Do they want us all to die and use the earthquake as an additional weapon against us? Let them tell us.” In Defne, the HDP, the most popular party of Bakure, the Kurdish name of southern Turkey, from east to west, distributes 500 meals a day to the people. As always, when this society, this people, encounters a calamity, A mechanism of assistance and assistance has been activated, which is natural in the situation, inherent in their culture accustomed to defend and protect themselves. There are many people from other cities who come to help the most affected places. There is a factory that produces housing containers, because importing them is twice as expensive as buying they cost expensive and they are set up in a very short time. Nobody in Turkey sells them to NGOs or associations, especially if they are foreign. They can’t be found, so they make their own. Then there’s a whole network for the distribution of food and medical supplies and basic services. Many of them put their skills to use Others just time and hands.

Without electricity, without water, without home

“Nothing came here, we had to organize ourselves,” the men who unload various goods to be divided and distributed tell us. It is not easy, even for those who want to help. Of those built here in those days, seven residential containers were purchased and donated by an association in the state of L’Orto di Marco, Padua, and delivered along with those donated by a German association called Mardef. . For the first time in five months, these cities, these villages, received help other than what they could gather with their nets. “It’s the first time – a Kurd of a certain age, someone who is seen to be highly respected by those around him – says that someone has come here. Even the press disappeared. It was as if we were lost, lost in the rising dust clouds when it all started. With that purple light sky never seen before. Yet we are still here, ready to face the winter, aware of how harsh and cold it can be. More people will die if they don’t help us. We have electricity, water, thousands of people. And homeless. But we always have land,” he says, taking some of it. “We have land,” he says in a firm Kurdish tone. Hasan, who started the container business with his other business partners in Samandağ, another ghost town, has to stop his car because the road is closed.

“There are those who can be saved, no one came”

At night, only their headlights have light to illuminate the landscape. A building where the ceilings of the apartments collapse in front of the car. They’ve stayed that way ever since. “There are those who die immediately, there are those who are immediately oppressed. For who drowned hours later. But many died of the cold,” he says excitedly. “No one has been coming to these cities, these villages for days. When someone came, they didn’t come to help, just to confirm. How many dead? And who knows”. The perception behind that rubble is exactly this: “People were asleep,” Hasan continues, at 4:20 a.m. but no one came”.