The malice of the century

The earthquakes, of magnitude 7.7 and 7.6, confronted Turkey with the greatest disaster of its century-long history. Both the magnitude of the earthquake and the scale of the destruction that emerged with it, the number of those who died under the rubble or were pulled out of it injured, and their conditions, are being watched with great horror and interest both from within the country and from the whole world.

But whoever has a share of humanity does not merely watch. The earthquake brings forth a humanitarian solidarity as great as the scale of the destruction it caused. Even though the earthquake has brought down buildings and caused the death of many people, it has a reviving effect on the humanity that remains. Thus the disaster of the century also brings out the heroic deeds of the century and unparalleled examples of solidarity.

While the earthquake reveals and exposes some people's faults, it also brings to light the goodness buried within the nation. Everyone has seen what the magnificent description in the sura of Zilzal expresses: "When the earth brings forth its burdens. When man says, 'What is happening to it?'" At the same time, a situation arises in which every atom's weight of good and every atom's weight of evil a person has done is seen.

It is known that the sura describes the Day of Judgment, but it also sheds light on the situations caused by the tremors that precede it. Whoever has done an atom's weight of good, and whoever has done an atom's weight of evil, comes out one by one. Contractors who did their work badly, officials who turned a blind eye to it, intermediaries who coveted the market value rather than the quality of the goods and plunged into their trade... And of course also those who did their work properly. And during the earthquake, the bustle of solidarity that emerged is the miraculous sight of humanity's revival as a movement of goodness. Construction emerging from among the rubble, life and resurrection emerging from the bosom of death.

While good people, with complete sincerity and self-sacrifice, have put their hands under the rubble for days, in no condition to deal with anything else, certain people are busy plundering every kind of benefit for themselves from the rubble of the earthquake. We saw that too. We saw it before, and we have seen it now. Now there are even people who can recount the history of the 1999 earthquake almost embellishing it.

"There was not a single act of looting in that earthquake," says a former minister. If one were to open the matter of how the money he himself collected to build earthquake housing was plundered, it would be more than enough. He was even tried for it.

In the 1999 earthquake there was looting and it was at its extreme, and moreover there were no Syrians in Turkey at that time. Today too there is looting, and in the midst of such cases there always will be. This has nothing to do with Turkey, nor with 1999 or 2023. When this happens in the USA or in Germany, the situation is no different.

There is no point in making every negative thing we see into a literary subject over which we will agonize ourselves. This too is something that shakes as much as the earthquake. Last year there was a flood in Germany, remember. For how many days did citizens keep shouting "where is this state?" During that time there were deaths too, people were left hungry and in the open, and on top of that there was looting as well.

Let us not even speak of the disasters that occur from time to time in the USA. The matter concerns human beings. It has nothing to do with being European, Syrian or Turkish. But the benefit that is sought by identifying the matter in particular with a tribe, a political stance or a race is no different from looting.

While the heroes who, working with heart and soul after the earthquake, are writing new pages of epic in human history go about their work, others have the sole concern of smearing what is being done, of disinforming by producing or spreading false and fabricated information. I think this is the greatest aftershock disaster of this earthquake.

After every earthquake, people, with the pains of the traumas they have been exposed to, with their mental fog and anxieties, may involuntarily fabricate many reports, may perceive the slightest report differently from how it is and cause it to be spread. In fact, in this sense there can be an innocent proportion of disinformation that arises from the atmosphere of the field, from the emotional environment. Any delay in meeting the urgent needs of the earthquake victims at that moment can make their psychology aggressive, they may say anything at that moment, and no one can blame them. It is met with understanding, and indeed feeling distressed at being unable to reach the situation is required by humanity. One does not busy oneself with answering them; it is also unnecessary, useless, and often even unjust for those who can help or are charged with helping to defend themselves for not having been able to arrive in time. Those who cry out because their hearts are burning from their losses are not reproached.

But many of the complaints we encounter come not from victims, but are made deliberately, just to be malicious, by people who are leagues away from the psychology and the effect of the event.

At his keyboard, he writes that no aid whatsoever has been given. While Mehmetçik is on the move everywhere, carrying out rescue work, making thousands of air sorties, they write that the TSK was late in landing in the field. They tell that the dam burst, that Haluk Levent was called from Ankara and asked to redirect the aid coming to Ahbap to AFAD. They cover the heading of TÜİK's statistics about the general construction dates of the housing in the earthquake zone and the population residing there and present it as the proportion of new ones among the collapsed buildings, and this table spreads virally as a serious disinformation operation.

The claim that AFAD or the Red Crescent is not doing its job properly and has not delivered any aid is turned into an unquestionable reality. Yet while these disinformations are being made, both institutions, together with all the other institutions, are working with heart and soul in the field, with all their staff or with the volunteers they organize and distribute to the field. They have neither the means nor the time to answer what is said about them, because they are busy saving lives and helping.

To fight these deliberate lies that would not occur even to the devil, the Directorate of Communications has had to issue a daily "disinformation bulletin." It is busy every day correcting tons of lies.

Thus, while the earthquake as the disaster of the century also brings out the century's uprising of humanity, on the other hand it enables us to see the century's wickedness.