Turkey is frequently rocked by earthquakes that hit different parts of the country and has lost thousands of its citizens in these disasters. The earthquake in Elazığ has brought to Turkey’s agenda, amid never-ending political debates, the reality that Turkey can at any time be hit by a strong quake and that its readiness for such disasters is doubtful.“If the 6 magnitude quake in Elazığ had taken place anywhere in the United States, for instance in San Francisco, or a region in Japan, those people would be alive today. Unfortunately, it took place in villages in the Kovancılar district of Elazığ,” says Star’s Mehmet Altan. Considering the fact that no people living in the city center lost their lives in the earthquake, he says it seems it was not the earthquake but the mud-brick homes that killed the 51 victims because these houses collapsed in the six villages affected by the quake. Altan points to poverty as the reason that leads people to live in mud-brick homes; however, he says such houses can be very safe if they are built like the model mud-brick house that was constructed by the İstanbul Technical University’s faculty of architecture at the university’s Maslak campus. This house is still standing despite the 1999 Marmara earthquake. “If the mud-brick homes are built as a result of helplessness and poverty, they kill in earthquakes. If these houses are built in line with current technology, nothing will happen in the event of an earthquake,” he says, adding that it is necessary to eliminate the poverty that results in people living in unsafe houses.
Just as earthquakes are a reality in other parts of the world, they are a reality in Turkey as well, says Vatan’s Okay Gönensin, adding that Turkey didn’t just learn yesterday that it has to live with earthquakes and that the measures that should be taken against this disaster are obvious. Yet he complains that Turkey is behaving as if it is for the first time seeing an earthquake. In every such case, people say we should take this and that measure, then everyone forgets the earthquake several days later despite seeing what kind of situation we are in by comparing us with other countries hit by earthquakes. Gönensin explains that the extent of deaths and damage done to a country due to an earthquake has become a sign of development in the era in which we live as an earthquake with the same magnitude can lead to different consequences in different countries. “The thing that makes this difference is the number of earthquake victims,” he notes.
Sabah’s Nazlı Ilıcak also complains that earthquakes and the measures that should be taken against them come to Turkey’s agenda only when a deadly earthquake hits a part of the country. “Turkey gets anxious whenever an earthquake hits. Geology professors go from one TV channel to another to make comments. Some buildings are strengthened, but in a city like İstanbul, the risk is enormous. Mud-brick houses were held responsible for the deaths in Elazığ, but the cost of haphazard and unplanned urbanization in İstanbul is likely to be very heavy,” warns Ilıcak.
