But, as we saw last week in and around İstanbul, disasters do happen. The torrential rains claimed more than 30 lives, many of them commuters on their way to work and truck drivers asleep in their trucks. They also caused enormous material damage to individual houses and commercial facilities located too close to streams that burst their banks and flooded the neighboring areas.As is usually the case when lethal accidents take place, the press is up in arms and is, rightly, searching for culprits. Local authorities should have provided better infrastructure and prevented excessive construction that blocked the natural drainage system, while companies should have ensured the safety of their workers.
But tragic accidents, whether they are caused by freak natural events, factory explosions or collapsed apartment blocks, are rarely followed by a genuine change of approach. Infrastructure work will probably be carried out in İkitelli to prevent a recurrence of the overflow, but within a few months, if not a few weeks, most people will have forgotten the lessons taught at such high cost and go back to their insouciant ways. Media organizations, so adept at covering crises, have not developed follow-up mechanisms, and many of these stories rapidly drop off the pages until the next catastrophe.
Corruption and greed, which allows companies and individuals to cut corners and authorities to turn a blind eye, undoubtedly play a major role. But a kind of fatalism -- the “bir şey olmaz factor” -- that allows people to shake off risk and engage in potentially dangerous behavior also bears part of the blame.
Last year I visited a factory that was producing automobile parts. As workers polished the metal products on large electric files, the air was thick with the glitter of metal dust. The shiny particles, backlit by a ray of sun, looked very pretty but they could not have been healthy for the workers' lungs. The factory owner confidently told me that “nothing would happen” when I asked why his workers weren't wearing protective masks. While such an answer was not unexpected on his part, I found that the laborers themselves did not appear unduly worried.
A decade ago, while our apartment was being renovated, we had a brief argument with a workman who had constructed a makeshift ladder by banging a few nails into rough pieces of wood to bridge a 1.5 meter gap left for a staircase. When we pointed out that a proper ladder was needed, he looked at us in total disbelief, clearly thinking that foreigners were rather odd. “Bir şey olmaz,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. That afternoon, the rotten wood gave way under his weight and he broke his leg.
For more than two years, I have stared at the burnt-out shell of an old wooden konak which stands meters from my balcony. Part of what's left of the facade hangs at an angle that appears more improbable by the day. The empty wreckage is just the kind of place that would attract adventurous children in search of a challenging playground. When I moved in, I was told that the municipality would demolish it any day.
A couple of days ago, I heard noises within the empty shell. Someone had gone inside, apparently to collect wood. Within minutes, the entire inner structure of the building gave way and collapsed with a great big crash. Whoever triggered the incident managed to get out in time. People gathered around it for a while, but once it became clear that no serious harm had been done, the rest of the construction was left to collapse another day.
The “nothing will happen” mentality is contagious, and none of us are immune. We all walk past accidents waiting to happen on a daily basis and do nothing about it. While we always expect the worst, inertia and hoping for the best always seem to get the upper hand. Until, that is, we get a reality check.
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