Enough Silence, Let’s Talk on the Earthquakes
The earthquake we experienced has been described as ‘the disaster of the century’. The fact that it spread to such a wide geographical area with such intensity and realised itself repeatedly undoubtedly made it different from others. The fact that the interventions were not carried out in a timely manner and in the quantity and quality they should have been both deepened and singularised the disaster in question. A tragedy that is so public, so publicised, so publicly and with such an overt and unabashed negligence that 8 months later it is still as unsolved as the first day, as uncertain and in the dark as the first day, is of course political, you cannot pass it off as a ‘natural disaster’ or ‘the magnitude/severity of a natural disaster’ or ‘an act of God’. Whether you look at it from the perspective of the climate crisis or the elitism, recklessness or shortsightedness of governments, natural disasters are also highly political before, during and after, and should naturally be dealt with in a political manner.
HATAY’S PAIN COULD NOT BE THE PAIN OF ALL OF US
On the other hand, a pain that is so political and that concerns and should concern everyone closely could only be so marginalised and reduced to its violence. The world, ‘Turkey and Syria’; Turkey, ‘1 region’; 1 region, ‘Hatay’; Hatay, ‘Defne’ in particular; Defne, ‘Armutlu’ ring by ring minimised, ring by ring disintegrated the pain. While the pain of 1 person should be the pain of all of us, the pain of 1 sphere became not even the pain of 1 province, but the pain of the people living it one by one and one by one. Yes, international organisations, yes, non-governmental organisations, yes, volunteers, donors, yes, who knows what, yes to all of them, but if this is a universal dimension and a visible face of a pain that cannot be completely attributed to them, there is also an invisible face that cannot be told, cannot be shared and left alone in that darkness. Nowadays, the world is arguing that the personal is political, and indeed it is, but I am afraid that slogans, like many other things, succumb to rote memorisation and desensitisation with their emptied interiors. Let no absurd meaning such as ‘let no one return to their normal’ or ‘let everyone stay in pain with us forever’ be inferred from this, because this meaning can only be inferred from an eclectic view of pain; what I want to say, however, is that the fact that the pain is not only my pain should be made clear, that the fire burns and will burn not only where it falls, but Akbelen, Atalay, Soma, Kader, you, me, all of us systematically. That there is a structural connection between an Antiochian who was forcibly displaced as an earthquake victim and a Syrian who was displaced in a war; that the exclusion of people because they are Kurdish or Alevi at best and their marginalisation because of their identity as women or transgender cannot be considered separately from each other; and most fundamentally, what/who all this serves and what kind of life/world imagination it leads to.
HEALING PAIN, NOT EXPLOITATION OF PAIN
While this is the case — that is, while the political has been stripped of its essence, determined by its nature and generalised; while the general and global has been reduced to the personal; while the personal has been depoliticised — it seems that traumas, which are perhaps the only existence after one’s life that one has the right to share whenever one wants, with whomever one wants, in whatever way one wants, as much as one wants, have been scattered around like rags. It should not have been necessary to say this, but traumas are very personal as well as very political. You cannot depersonalise the political just because the personal is political. The individual shares his/her pain only when he/she feels ready, and this is very understandable. This is one point that changed with 6 February. We — the people of 11 cities — have undergone a shift in meaning that brought with it a loss of meaning in our identities, along with many other things that everyone knows and counts and can count. Not enough, we have taken refuge in carrying earthquake survivorship as a new identity, hiding our real identity from time to time just for this reason, avoiding this issue if possible, and if not, not appearing in public much. While it used to be a source of pride to say ‘I am from Antakyalı’ in an ordinary conversation, nowadays it is an open wound that everyone, everyone we know, everyone we don’t know, everyone who comes across, everyone we know and don’t know, is pouring their hands and arms into like kneading dough, so suddenly, so carelessly, so banally, so that it is not objectified and swallowed, or through love, If it turns into a belonging that is withheld, hidden, hurtful, lest it be treated as a pawn that is put forward with the intention of gaining attention, empathy, sympathy, material and moral resources, don’t you think there is something to pause and think about here? While we carefully wash our hands and wear gloves even while kneading dough, social media is full of sad music and expressions such as ‘destroyed’, ‘finished’, ‘dead’, etc. accompanying the images of the ruins of photographs, diaries, rooms, loved ones that some people once couldn’t bear to look at, taken brutally by extremely unrelated people; daily life is full of questions such as ‘do you have a loss? ’, ‘of course your house collapsed’, ‘Antakya is finished, I didn’t expect it to be this bad, it won’t recover’, and other questions and comments that don’t help anything and don’t do anyone any good.
LET’S TALK ABOUT CONSTRUCTION, NOT DESTRUCTION
Of course, neither only individuals nor only structures are responsible for this pain. While the individuals who make up the structures and the structures that shape the individuals are constantly weaving each other with a network of their own, it is a politely ‘incomplete’ approach to pile the burden on one side. As both individuals and structures, it should not be the pain that we need to dismantle or decentralise, but our methods of understanding, organising and solidarity with it. What we should have shared collectively was not the ruins and empty words, but the steps to be taken for the reconstruction of the ruins. What we should have publicised and opened to everyone was not the wounds of people and/or the impropriety of diving into their wounds as if we were entering our own rooms, but the knowledge of how to communicate with a person who is at one with pain, and how to contribute to his/her self-empowerment around this pain. What we should have intervened in was not people’s trauma stories and mourning processes, but their being left alone with their pain. What we should have uprooted were not people’s feelings of trust and belonging, but the structures that reinforce their vulnerability and dependency. What we should have organised was not to make people open their hands, humiliate them, denigrate them and treat them with the idea that ‘they got what they deserved’, but to make them live with dignity and care…
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I could go on forever because this pain is more layered, powerful and endless than you can imagine, but now, in order to understand it better, remove the word ‘pain’ from all sentences in which it appears, replace it with the word ‘struggle’ and read this article again. In this way, you will see how globally and nationally we have failed not only a physical ability, but also a highly psychological, mental, political and ethical act. At the same time, I would like to leave you with a question that might make it possible to start again, a question that might shed light on the despair in which we have settled: Where do YOU stand when structures pit individuals against each other by forcing them to solve even the smallest problem with personal efforts, and when individuals only criticise structures and evade responsibility?
https://www.gazeteduvar.com.tr/cok-sustuk-hadi-biraz-egri-oturup-dogru-konusalim-haber-1641689
Published on October 11th, 2023.
Translated by DeepL Translate
