The unending ordeal of the Syrian

While we have been preoccupied for two weeks with one of the greatest natural disasters of our century-long history, we are not able to follow adequately what is happening in Syria, right next door, which this calamity has struck to the same extent, even more. Yet the earthquake struck not only 10 cities of Turkey but also the Syrian cities of Aleppo, Hama and Idlib, together with all their settlements.

The number of deaths recorded in these regions so far is over 6 thousand, and the number rises with each passing day. What is worse, because of the situation Syria has been in for 12 years, the aid is not reaching them at all, and the international community is not showing sufficient interest. In Turkey, even if there may have been some disruptions at first in managing the aftermath of the earthquake, the intense interest of both the domestic and international community has never been lacking. Thus, while Turkey lives through the disaster of the century, it is at the same time able to answer it with the greatest humanitarian aid mobilization of the century.

But unfortunately we cannot say the same for Syria. First of all, because of the difference in approach, of both the regime and the international community, between the areas controlled by the opposition and by the regime, the Syrian, adding suffering to the suffering he has endured for 12 years, is living both his earthquake and his mourning in the bitterest way.

Because of Russia's pressure in the UN Security Council that all aid to Syria enter through government-controlled areas, the Öncüpınar border gate had been closed to UN aid since 2020. That is why even the most urgent aid could be delivered only 8 days after the earthquake. And this aid is in fact aid that can only serve to feed the survivors. As for those who remained under the rubble and could quite well have been saved by the first interventions, it is now too late.

HUMANITARIAN AID VIA ASSAD, WHOM DOES IT HELP?

In fact, although this issue occupied the agenda of world public opinion for days, no soothing solution was produced. While the issue was being debated, an attempt was even made to create the perception that the Öncüpınar gate had been closed by Turkey and that the delivery of aid had been blocked by Turkey. Yet Turkey, busy with its own disaster, far from blocking the delivery of international aid to Syria, was in a rush to extend a hand to Syria as well.

The earthquake in fact struck both the opposition-controlled and the regime-controlled areas in Syria. But the areas controlled by the regime, that is, Aleppo and Hama, are areas inhabited by a population that has been opposed to the regime from the start. The Arab and Asian countries that tried to deliver their aid from the moment of the earthquake tried to deliver it through the regime. These attempts may perhaps rest on a good-faith belief that the regime still feels a responsibility toward the people under its control. But it can even be said that Bashar al-Assad, rather than being saddened by this earthquake, felt a joy because the earthquake did what he has been doing to his people for 12 years, and perhaps has lately been unable to do.

Faisal Al Qassem of Al Jazeera said that Assad's visit to the region only 5 days after the earthquake reflected the joy of a victorious commander more than the state of a responsible leader rushing to the aid of his citizens and sharing the pains of his people. During his visit Assad gave a rather cheerful impression and did not refrain from laughingly taking selfies with anyone who wanted.

Unfortunately Faisal Al Qassem's observation is not wrong at all. There is no sign that the regime, which obstructed international aid after the earthquake in Syria, delivered the aid that did arrive to where it should go. In essence, the Syrian people have for 12 years been suffering at Assad's hands, with Iranian and Russian support, far more than what they experienced in this earthquake. A people whom he has bombed for years from the air and the land with barrel bombs have now also been struck by an earthquake; what is there for him to be sad about? Is the fate not clear of the aid sent to be delivered to the earthquake victims in the hands of this person who does not hide his joy that they have been exposed to an earthquake? Unfortunately, in this earthquake too the Syrian people were left alone once again to suffer their own pain by themselves.

THE US, WHICH GAVE 10 THOUSAND TRUCKLOADS OF ARMS AID TO TERRORISTS, CANNOT HELP THE EARTHQUAKE VICTIMS

Perhaps the USA alone has no right at all to complain of being stuck on the regime's obstructions in delivering aid, but strangely the same complaints come from it as well. Yet to carry out the demographic and military operations it wants in Syria, the USA has so far recognized neither the regime nor Iran nor Russia. Perhaps it is the only country that can put forward no other excuse regarding humanitarian aid. With a very small part of the military aid it has piled up there, it could have delivered every kind of aid to the earthquake victims much earlier. It did not do so. Instead it now promises to provide some aid to those harmed by the earthquake, after they have seen what they were going to see.

While this is the situation of Syrians inside Syria, unfortunately the Syrians inside Turkey too not only bear the burden of the earthquake more than anyone, but on top of that are exposed to disgusting racist discourse.

THE EARTHQUAKE, WHICH MAKES NO DISTINCTION, HAS STRUCK THE SYRIANS THE MOST, BUT THERE IS ANOTHER BLOW FROM OUR RACISTS

Yıldıray Oğur wrote very well yesterday. The earthquake did not separate anyone according to identity, but the debauched among us separate the Syrian. In the Syrian part of the earthquake, 6000 deaths have been identified so far, and the number is rising. On the Turkish side, one in every 5 people identified as having lost their lives in the earthquake is Syrian. Yet the Syrian population is at most one in 15, even in the region. This means that the earthquake struck most the old, low-quality housing in which Syrians live.

But the Syrians' ordeal does not end here either; they are not even granted the right to be earthquake victims. When they even try to take their share of the aid going to earthquake victims, there are those who raise an uproar that "all the aid goes to Syrians." Among them too there are those left in the open, there are the dead, there are those under the rubble, it is said that the remaining ones too need to be settled, but let them just be caught in a frame, and immediately Ümit, who would not swallow ashes in the defense of the homeland, rushes there.

Those whom we have not seen defending the homeland against real dangers until now try to steal heroism from the officiousness of protecting it against the very people whom the homeland protects and looks after, the very people for whom it is a homeland. Stealing hero poses while exiting humanity.

Thank God Turkey is not this. Thank God these are exactly the villains that every great nation that emerges needs. The greatness of a nation is realized through the firm answers it gives to these villains.