From housing to home, from urban transformation to paradigmatic transformation

Three weeks have passed since the earthquake that has stuck in our language as the disaster of the century. While the rubble of the earthquake is being cleared, and while an effort is being made to dress the wounds of our citizens whose homes were destroyed or damaged and to meet their needs, we have also begun to talk about earthquake-compatible cities, urban transformation, and earthquake-resistant buildings. We had said: let us save the lives we can save, let us stop the bleeding, let us if possible meet the urgent needs, and then we will talk about everything. Now we are in an environment where everything can be discussed a bit more comfortably. One must not shy away from discussing anything.

A society of 13.5 million affected by the earthquake is an area larger than the land area, and the population, of many European countries. It is an urban, educated population with a high economic level on average. Moreover, it is a population that carries a considerable share of Turkey's industry and export burden. So much so that this earthquake has struck not only this region but the whole country in many respects. Getting it back on its feet as soon as possible, and keeping its population here, is a necessity.

With such an earthquake, the emergence of a migration is inevitable. It is very important that this migration not be permanent, but for purely sociological reasons. In Turkey the economic balances, production, industry and urban fabric would be badly affected by such a large population movement. For some people to voice a concern about "demographic transformation" before the more complex sociological and economic consequences of this probable migration is a very great shame. Among the other problems it may cause, this one is not even worth mentioning.

Moreover, if by demographic structure what is meant here is the new demographic composition that the people living here would form by spreading across the country, shame on them. However much they claim to be nationalists, they have still not been able to see the country as a whole, and they are leagues away from a definition of the nation that can encompass the whole of Turkey. Turkey is a social body, and at this moment the pain of a wound on one side of that body is felt throughout the whole body. The concept of nation requires, before anything else, such a conception and feeling of a social body.

And if what they mean is that, with these places emptied, others, for instance Syrians, would come and settle here, again shame on them. In this earthquake, which struck both Syria and Turkey at the same time, Syrians were affected proportionally at least as much as Turks; they were trapped under the rubble, they died, they were injured, and they were left homeless and destitute. If the earthquake zone has become uninhabitable for its natives, it has all the more become uninhabitable for Syrians, and I say this truth, of course, with shame. Does anyone who is human need justifications, soothing statements of this kind?

We hear a great deal these days about earthquake preparedness and earthquake-resistant construction. This week our guest on the program Görüş on Ülke TV was our esteemed friend, the architect Serkan Akın. He explained that we must now carry this issue far beyond the concept of housing based on more resilient technological construction and industrial production. He explained that what we need, rather than urban transformation, is a serious paradigmatic transformation.

He explained that such a transformation requires us to substitute the "home" (ev) for our current understanding of "housing" (konut), that is, for our serial-housing approaches that see people merely as customers and consumers and impose their own lifestyle on everyone. Home instead of housing. And moreover with traditional methods and materials, single-story houses with gardens. Houses that everyone will build according to their own needs, more earthquake-resistant and also far better suited to our human existence, a transformation in which institutions and values such as neighborliness, the neighborhood and the family would be revived. Akın says plainly: let us leave the city, let us return to the village, or if not, to the cities of Anatolia, and let us lighten the load on Istanbul.

These are proposals that sound very pleasing to both reason and heart, of course, but at first glance they are proposals that also crowd the same mind with questions. For instance, whom will you persuade, and how, to return to his village? Living in the city has lately not been merely a choice; it is also an irreversible result of Turkey's present economic and social development.

Of course states can determine the direction of these transformations. For example, what kind of choice is it that 70 to 80 percent of Turkey's industrial load has been piled up in Marmara, on the earthquake line? Of course it is not the choice of today's government, but today's government has not implemented a serious strategy to spread industry across the country either. Regional incentive packages in industry and investment are perhaps an important step precisely in the name of this strategy, but for it to become more efficient a far more active and persistent policy is needed. Otherwise the present concentration constitutes a serious national security threat for the country. In an earthquake or another extraordinary situation, it is easy enough to suffer the consequences of having put all one's eggs in one basket. The approaching Marmara earthquake, indeed, tells us this as well.

If, without taking such measures, the investments and steps that make Istanbul more attractive with each passing day are abandoned and industry and development can be distributed equally to Anatolia, Akın's proposals can go beyond a simple romanticism of "come on, let us go back to our village."

However, even when we think within the existing situation and paradigm, one of the most urgent solutions against earthquakes is to make housing earthquake-resistant. Building new construction in compliance with the earthquake regulation is surely very valuable, and it was seen that only a very small proportion of newly built housing collapsed in the earthquake.

But it was also seen that all of the old buildings need to be overhauled. Moreover, in a significant part of these regions these policies had been proposed under the "urban transformation" program and had been persistently attempted. Where they could be carried out, there is either no damage or very little. But against the urban transformation practices there stood leftist associations, which today hold the government responsible for the destruction, and politicians of the CHP, HDP and İYİ Party. They organized and incited the public against urban transformation, and in the end took many initiatives to the courts and blocked them. In places with much destruction such as Antakya and Hatay, the disaster said "I am coming," and the government had indeed heard it.

Those who, after the earthquake had occurred and this destruction had struck these regions the most, shamelessly hold their government responsible for it, what, really, did they expect of Erdoğan? To act truly like a dictator and, paying no heed to anyone, to the right of private property, the judiciary, civil society, the people and so on, to burst into the field and demolish their houses?

Perhaps on this occasion it is worth remembering: there is a right of property, a judiciary, a people that limit Erdoğan too, and it is these that constitute the limits of the measures against earthquakes.