Close
This episode of the Takhayyul Nativess and Emergent Issues Podcast hosts Dr. Aslı Zengin, Dr. Omar Al-Gazzi and Dr. Sumrin Kalia discussing the aftermath of the Turkey/Syria Earthquakes
Presenter: Dr. Sertaç Sehlikoğlu
Guests: Dr. Aslı Zengin; Dr. Omar Al-Ghazzi; Dr. Sumrin Kalia
Transcript
Dear everyone, welcome to the fourth of our Takhayyul Nativeness and Emergent Issues podcast series organised by the members of the ERC project named Takhayyul at the UCL's Institute for Global Prosperity, the IGP. I am Sertaç Sehlikoğlu, the primary investigator of this five year project. The need to this podcast series emerged due to a number of reasons. Firstly, the members of this team, as many of you may already be familiar, are often native scholars who have expertise about the very geographies they have grown up in. The project is carried in 11 Different countries in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and South Asia, often referred to as the Global South. That being said, those very contexts are more vulnerable to global changes and crisis, as we have seen in a number of events that took place in last six months, including the flood catastrophe in Pakistan, a result of the global warming. Thus, the members of this team suggested to create a platform where we can address the emergent issues as they happen, with other scholars, intellectuals and activists. The fourth of our podcast series is put together in the aftermath of the earthquake that created a catastrophic damage in Turkey and in Syria, marked as the most significant earthquake of the century. The long lasting effects of these multiple earthquakes is yet to be known. As a project team, we wanted to have a conversation about global precarity and catastrophe with this podcast. And for this, I have the privilege of hosting three amazing friends and colleagues who are quite significant with the way they're able to pour their hearts and minds into what they do, what they author and how they think, in the way the terms intellectual scholar and or activists do not feel enough. Dr. Aslı Zengin is an assistant professor in the Department of Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies at Rutgers University New Brunswick. Her research lies at the intersection of ethnography of queer and trans lives and deaths, medical legal regimes of sex and gender and sexuality, critical studies of violence and sovereignity as well as transnational aspects of LGBTQ movements in the Middle East, with a special focus on Turkey. She is also a queer feminist, and has been involved in the feminist solidarity group for disaster in Turkey since the February 6, the earthquake. Dr. Omar Al-Ghazzi is an associate professor in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE. He works on the geopolitics of global communications, particularly in relation to news, media and popular culture. He is interested in political contestation of narratives around digital technologies as well as of representations of time and memory, with a focus on the Middle East and North Africa. Dr. Sumrin Kalia is a political anthropologist and part of our to hide project research team at the UCL's Institute for global prosperity. She studies political Islam and civil society while placing them in the broader framework of political culture. Her research deploys ethnographic tools to explore cultural and social processes which shape political activism in South Asia. Dr. Kalia's project at Takhayyul examines the role of imagination in generating expectations and actions for the future. So without further ado, I'd like to turn to Dr. Aslı Zengin. Dr. Zengin, I'd like to start with you, as I believe you have been in the region that was hit by the earthquake as part of a feminist solidarity group.
Aslı Zengin:
Thank you, Sertaç, Zişan and Hazal for organising this very important roundtable. Today, I'm not going to speak as an academic but as a queer activist who has been involved in feminist relief efforts for the earthquake in Turkey. I will try to explain why feminism significantly matters as a response to disasters because disasters reveal and intensify already existing relations of power and forms of discrimination and exclusion. gender and sexual discrimination is one of them. The recent disaster in Turkey Kurdistan and Syria has once again shown that view men, queer and trans people are among those who shoulder the harshest costs of the earthquake, I will briefly lay out the gender sexual and racialized fault lines that have deepened the impact of this catastrophe. And then I will summarise our relief efforts as the feminist solidarity group for disaster in Istanbul. Since day one, we have been working together with two major Kurdish demons organisations in Diyarbakır. The Rosa Women's Association and the free women's movement TJA who have shown strong presence in especially in the absence of the state, in the earthquake zone, and in the face of humans dismissal for their particular situation and needs. Through our conversation today, I would also like to call on an international feminist solidarity and support. I went to Adıyaman for a week with a group of feminists in Adıyaman 1000s had deserted their city standing buildings were abandoned. There were no lights in the city, many of the poorest had to remain in the city centre. This impoverished population was also strongly divided by racialized lines, for example, Roma communities, and Syrian refugees were at the bottom of this hierarchy and had limited access to camps and relief centres. People whose buildings were slightly or moderately damaged, had pitch tents in the area next to their apartments, surveilling potential thieves and protecting their household furniture, goods, and other valuable items. These were the only valuables some people had managed to save after long years of work. This situation was even harsher in certain villages where survivors migrated from hard hit city centres and took shelter in their extended family members damaged houses or tents in the gardens. Some villagers had to sleep in barns with their animals. Among the villages we visited some tents or houses hosted four to five families from Adıyaman city centre. In this households, women and girls were responsible for domestic chores and sustenance of life itself. This gendered division of labour was largely invisible. Our friends who worked in the rubbles during the first week after the earthquake stress that it was heartbreaking to find women in children's rooms next to their beds why member found nearby the exit door many of humans initial response was to first rescue their children rather than themselves. Another issue that risked women's lives was the gendered dress code because the earthquake caught everyone in their sleep some women with night gowns refrain from stepping outside before wearing their headscarves and changing their clothes. So women died or risked their lives because of religious and moral expectations about their bodily displays in public and man did not necessarily have to deal with similar expectations at the moment of the earthquake. So, they could not change their clothes and underwear, like women in general, they could not change their clothes or underwear since the moment of the earthquake lack of water, soap and detergent made it impossible for them to maintain their hygiene. Some of them had started developing health problems. In the first weeks, it was hard to find the private space to change their clothes especially. And in one of the villages a young woman mentioned that all village women had their menstruation at the same time the day after the earthquake, they could not find any menstrual pads. When initial relief materials arrived, they could find diapers for babies and toddlers but no pads for themselves. So they use baby diapers during their menstruation. They had difficulty also talking about and asking for their needs with man. So in response to these emergency circumstances, we organised the purple track campaign for two cities or the Adıyaman and Antakya. The idea of purple truck was first raised by Kurdish women who were working in the earthquake zone, they themselves were impacted by the earthquake in Diyarbakır. At the same time, they were the first ones to show up for emergency relief efforts canvassing with women in neighbouring towns impacted by the earthquake to understand their specific needs. As feminists in Istanbul, we started holding a series of meetings to immediately participate in these relief efforts. While a group of us had already travelled to the earthquake zone, to work in the rubbles in the first week of the earthquake, the rest of us initiated the purple truck campaign for Adıyaman first. Based on daily updates from the city we revised the list of emergency items to be transported to Adıyaman. Our campaign was based on raising public awareness about these women specific needs, and storing items specific donations in three main locations in Istanbul. These items included hygiene kits, menstrual pads, wet wipes, diapers for kids, slippers, underwear, clothing, washbowls, broom, soap, shampoo, detergent, toilet tissue paper towel, box of assorted grain veggie oil and flour and also colour books and toys for children. Once we filled up the truck, it departed from Istanbul on February 21. On the same night, a group of us also took a flight to Adıyaman to distribute women the items according to a designated list of neighbourhoods and villages. Friends, who remained in Istanbul started the organisation of the second purple track campaign, this time for Antakya-Samandağ. Until the arrival of our purple track campaign, many women mentioned to us in Adıyaman that nobody else had either recognised or prioritise their needs. We also established the women's tent in the Adıyaman campsite which was organised under the coordination of the pro Kurdish People's Democratic Party, HDP, and this campsite was unique in terms of its inclusive politics towards the survivors regardless of their sectarian religious and ethnic identities. For instance, while most Syrians were denied tents in other camps, here one fifth of the tents were allocated for them. Every sign in the campsite was also written in Kurdish, Arabic and Turkish. This includes the attitudes towards social difference also made this campsite a safe space for our feminist, queer and trans presence. In the campsite, the gendered division of labour mapped itself onto the tent life. Child and elderly care, reproduction of household, and emotional and physical labour, were all on women's shoulders. There was no space of escape for women in tents. They had a tendency to spend most of their day in these tents, without having a time of their own and socialising with other women. Mostly men dominated the common spaces in the camp, making it difficult for women to claim and use the spaces for their own social needs. Because of the circumstances, it was very important to create a space for women, queers and trans people where they could feel safe and comfortable without family and social pressure. At the beginning, when we pitched the tent, the women's tent, it attracted only a few women. Then we started visiting the tents in the camp and informing women about the tent. As days went by, the many women became more aware of the space and told their friends and neighbours and other women from their extended families. They started to visit our tents regularly to claim some leisure time for themselves and talk with us and each other. Our efforts in the women's stand, usually orient around creating a momentary cycle of joy and pleasure and material and sensual moments of normalcy that used to exist prior to the earthquake. These are small moments of escape from the harsh reality and the responsibilities women have to shoulder but they still matter. We need to maintain the space in the long term. And many women were highly enthusiastic in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake, and they showed their great willingness to donate, spend time in Adıyaman or participate in other relief activities. These numbers however, have started decreasing compared to the first weeks of the disaster. So it's important to also receive international feminist support now. You can contact us via afeticinfeministler@gmail.com. I think it's going to be posted on the website when this video recording is also posted. And you can learn more about the specific forms of support you could provide if you contact this email address. And then you can also follow us on our social media accounts @afeticinfeminist. And I guess I'm gonna stop here and maybe we can continue to discuss more during the q&a. Thank you.
Sertaç Sehlikoglu:
Thank you, thank you very much Dr. Zengin, I just want to, kind of, remind everyone also that the detailed information is going to be available on the podcast and the channel, UCL minds under which Takhayyul Nativeness series. Thank you very much. And without further ado, Omar Al-Ghazzi. Dr. Al-Ghazzi
Omar Al-Ghazzi:
Thank you, thank you for the organisers and you know, for giving us the opportunity to discuss this painful and important topic and discussion. And I will perhaps start with noting the importance of a feminist approach and kind of echoing what Aslı was saying. Not because I'm like, I've been on the ground or kind of following the immediate aftermath but as an academic who is interested in Syria and the region more broadly. I note the problem of how they regiones continuously talked about in relation to geopolitics and military kind of changes and advances that really erases the struggles of people. The scale of the disaster, like really shows, you know, like how the geo politicisation of everything to do with Syria in particular really works against people and and part of this is the problem of punditry as well, like the people whose voices are the loudest in commenting on the disaster, they speak about kind of shifts in the power between different states between militias and you know, what this would kind of tell us about the about the Middle East international relations, and this continues to work against the people erasing their struggles and priorities and adding insult to injury to everything, you know, that's unfolding in Syria. And like, while, you know, the, I don't know, I find that actually quite difficult to talk about it. Because I think the scale of the disaster, particularly when it comes to Syria, is really, really difficult to put in words, just the very idea that there are some people who, who have been stuck under the rubble multiple times before due to bombings, and currently due to an earthquake in northwest Syria. When you read the stories of people and individuals, and you know, how the pain and the trauma that they carry, I think it becomes really difficult to actually understand or even put in words, the pain that entails and loss of, of loved ones, and you know, what, what bodies, bodies of survivors continue to carry from injury to like physical injuries to psychological injuries. But certainly when it comes to the to the natural disaster, there is, of course, the the earthquake is a natural phenomenon, but the layers of how, how it like the kind of injustice as the layers of injustice, that unfold are very much political, even the very idea of like the structural integrity of buildings, of course, there's been just a lot of coverage about Turkey in relation to urban planning, and permits and corruption and so forth. In Syria, in addition to that layer, there's also the structural vulnerability of buildings in areas that have been bombed for years during the war by the regime by the Russian military, as well. And, you know, being kind of scenes of, of conflict, and warfare more more broadly. So there is that layer that made so many buildings in the poorest areas, let's say when we talk about cities, like a city, like Aleppo, in the working class areas of Aleppo, but also in villages and towns across the Northwest of Syria. And there is kind of the additional layers of thinking about the impact of sanctions, for example, again, again, and aspect that usually is only there's only interest in it in relation to kind of the use of sanctions as a political and geopolitical tool. But we know that sanctions never work in the way that they're intended and they're cruel measures, when it comes to how they impact people. And kind of the punditry around the sanctions, the technicalities of how it unfolded during the during the aftermath of the of the earthquake dominated but I think, to think about it more broadly, is also important. And there are examples how it made the lives of Syrians much more difficult, including the ability of, of Syrians to transfer money to the Syrians abroad, the Syrian diaspora to transfer money to their families, within the the geography of Syria, but also the ability of NGOs to, to work to work within. And of course, the earthquake only made issues of poverty of the health of public health and safety. All these all these aspects of the biopolitics of life basically about you know, the ability to survive and carry on have been made so much worse. So there is you know, we haven't even talked about let's say a military strike that happened in the aftermath of the earthquake, Israel bombed Damascus on February 19, you know, days after the earthquake happened in the country and bombed Aleppo, on March 7, and there, there were civilian casualties in Damascus. 15 people died and many more people lost their homes. And and to think that such bombing a country that has just gone through an earthquake, like it really, yeah, I think we have to, like stop and think about think about that, like how, and how that passes as if it's just, it's just another, you know, like episode in the, in the unfolding geopolitical crisis or, and without, like, without really thinking of how kind of depraved the the morality and and kind of respect to human life that that entails to have people made homeless, you know, weeks week, not even a week after a country is hit by an earthquake. And that also includes the Syrian regime, like the northwest Syria was, in fact, actually bombed by the Syrian military in the aftermath of the earthquake, and there was fighting between between militias and the army there. So like there is, it's, there's this added layer that makes it even more kind of like difficult to really think of the scale of what people there must be going through the politics of a distribution that was very much again, like a political, geopolitical, football, the Syrian regime. So the earthquake as a chance to get legitimacy on the international stage and seek normalisation of ties with, with different governments. And we're already seeing a lot of movement in that regard with particularly within Arab countries, kind of recognising the Syrian regime and re initiating kind of diplomatic recognition after years of boycott. But even even how NGOs are subjected to various kinds of campaigns within Syria, to discredit non regime affiliated organisations, start rumours around them, that they're actually stealing money from the West and not doing anything to help people. So, instead of even allowing, you know, any sort of aid and improvement of the lives of people, or allowing organisations to, to operate, they these organisations find themselves having to kind of face campaigns online against them, rumours against them, already, we see a lot of politics around reconstruction and urban planning, in areas that are dealt with by the state as conflict zones. And the areas you know, that there there is an interest in kind of rearrangement of urban life. So already that has that has been kind of part of the, of the contention and and struggle that's, that's happening, especially when foreign governments, like Iran, for example, are involved in the kind of giving money to urban reconstruction initiatives. And even within the Syrian regime, there are reports of kind of competition between different figures to appear to be kind of to be giving to giving aid. And that that is kind of talking about the situation in Syria, if we talk about Syrians in Turkey, already, I think Aslı mentioned, the discrimination against against Syrians. And actually, given all what I just said about how dire things are in Syria, there are many Syrians in Turkey who went back to Syria, because they, after they became homeless, they just found it really difficult to stay in Turkey, to navigate kind of their safety to get aid within Turkey and I know from acquaintances and friends that it was very difficult for Syrians to actually stay in many camps and the affected areas, or even even move to other safe areas within within Turkey. So, the kind of the racism was somehow like exacerbated and justified with what happened. And just to conclude, like this kind of thinking about the situation is again to bring up that issue of how, in the general framing of what's happening in the region as a whole, there is kind of what I think is sickening level of selective solidarity. And there really needs to be kind of a reframing of even the nation state focus in that sense, because if we look at the region as a whole, we also cannot neglect what's happening in Syria and regime and you know, rebel areas. So, there is a commonality and kind of the experiences of the kind of all these layers of tragedy that I've been talking about, but also in Lebanon, for example, with the economic collapse. And in Palestine. We cannot forget also the struggle that Palestinians continue to embark on with kind of the the unprecedented or not, we say unprecedented, but it's really the escalating kind of attacks that they are facing across Palestine, and particularly in the in the West Bank.
Sertaç Sehlikoglu:
Thank you. Thank you very much, Omar. Actually, before we move on to Sumrin who's going to tell us a little bit about this huge earthquake that took place in 2005, I think the scale was 8.1. And what was done and what could have been done since then, in Pakistan. I want to say that there are a number of elements that I kind of as Chair, I'm feeling this urge of talking about, I'm going to hold my horses, move on with Sumrin and then we will start the q&a.
Sumrin Kalia:
It's a sad juncture that we are having to come across these kinds of difficult conversations. Quite a quick succession. Just two months ago, we were talking about the Pakistani earthquake, which also created such a huge disaster across the country. Right now talking about ????sufficiency??? and earthquake, I feel like sometimes it's important to reflect back on things that have happened before. And these tragedies in that occurred before. So basically, I'm going to talk about the Pakistani earthquake, it's been a long time, 2005, was about 18 years ago, somehow we can have like a longer duree understanding of the consequences these kinds of intense human tragedies can bring. Well, I'll begin with mostly a brief idea of what actually happened and who were the real actors on the ground where my focus will remain mostly on this politics of aid. And then how in the long term, this politics of aid actually turns up. So this earthquake was about 8.2. Richter scale in October 8, and the major areas affected were the northern areas and Kashmir, the Pakistan administrate Kashmir and also the Indian occupied Kashmir. More than 100,000 people died and more than 140,000 people were injured. And cities were completely flat like Balakot city was completely in rubbles. There were people cut off without any kind of access, no government, no agencies, no doctors were there for quite a long time. And the earthquake displaced 3.5 million people and an estimated 1.6 million people went without adequate food supply. And there were long term also effects of the earthquake, which I'm going to talk about a little bit later but the Pakistanis actually came in a lot by the mobilised, biggest amount of mobilisation for support came from Pakistanis themselves and people just in a week's time, about a 1.7 billion rupees were collected and the President's Relief Fund, and $360 million were received from abroad. But then we need to talk about the context in which this earthquake takes place. At that time, Pakistan was being the role of the military government of Musharraf, and we were also, the country was also one of the ???frontline??? states of the US war on terror. So the military was fighting the Afghan Taliban on the other side of the border, and because of its stronghold within the country, and also beyond, in the relief efforts, the military maintained, managed to be the only major actor and all the other people who are coming for support international NGOs or even the local ones, they were relying heavily on the military to access the earthquake hit areas, and there was no national disaster management authority at the time. Local government institutions were also absent. So which is why the whole relief and rescue work was largely in the control of the military. What happened because of the Pakistan's geostrategic position at the time as if ??"frontline state"???, Pakistan did get immense support from the US and the NATO military forces. The international community overall had a poor response. Although, in fact, initially even the United States was not very supportive. But again, going back to the sum, the military was one actor. The other actors were these international NGOs, which really relied on the military. And there was a third actor also, which actually, created a lot of, which was, around which a lot of noise was created in the international media. And that was Jamaat-ud-Dawa, and Islamist organisation which had connections to jihadist groups within Kashmir. And there was a lot of criticism on the role of the Jamaat-ud-Dawa at the time. But what we keep forgetting is that when such crisis happen, you need infrastructure. Somehow, the mosques networks are so much wider, even more than the local government ones, institutions, that this end up being the mean, we mean locations from where these kind of rehabilitation activities can be carried out. But in the long run, what happens to all these three actors and begin with Musharraf the military, within three years military rule was ousted in 2008, the Islamize also lost their support, voted out, when the New Democracy came in. And the US image worsened, it didn't really get any better. And US was seen more as a fair weather friend, because it was seen that its programmes have much more to do with buying or renting influence related to backpacks and military and promote US security interests, rather than helping Pakistanis. As a social response, in the long term, it was hugely difficult to build back more than 7000 public schools just in the Missoula district were destroyed. Not even half of them have been rebuilt, even though 18 years have passed, and children who are under the age of three at the time of the earthquake accumulated huge heights deficits and scored significantly bad on academic tests. But on the other hand, this earthquake also resulted in the creation of NDMA, which was like the National Disaster Management Authority was created in 2007, in which it was decided that all armed forces and NGOs and agencies will work through the NDMA to conduct all kinds of operations. Since the earthquake was a little bit, it was in this contested territory of Kashmir, a little bit influence from the India, was rather a good surprise, because India supported and helped in the rehabilitation efforts, despite the fact that the Peace Bridge, which was opened just a year before the earthquake happened was also destroyed in the earthquake, but the earthquake actually managed to ease the tensions across the border. But in the long run, as I said, all those actors who were active in the relief effort did not receive any long term advantage, in fact, because may partly, majorly because of their failure to provide adequate support, they accumulated more blame than credit. And we can actually then see perhaps understand what might be the long term effects in terms of the political geopolitics, the local politics, in the aftermath of certain these tragedies, and also the geopolitics that Omar has been talking about.
Sertaç Sehlikoglu:
Thank you. Thank you very much, Sumrin before we are starting the q&a, I want to say a couple of things if that's okay, first of all, this particular podcast was extremely difficult for the team members to put together, Zişan Köker, Hazal Aydın and myself, we have been kind of trying to find the way to make ourselves useful, which is also one of the reasons why I kind of wanted Aslı Zengin on this platform today, as somebody who was active, and was doing a lot more than we could. But we were torn apart between trying to make ourselves useful while following the news. And I want to kind of clarify what it means to be following the news as a Turkish person in the first couple of days, first two weeks, that also meant that we were able to follow in our mother tongue, live tweets sent from under durables by the survivors whose voices later on was silence one by one, like its effect was quite enormous. It's it's emotional effects, and therefore putting together this one from the day one we're like, do we have the energy do we have not have the energy, but I think it all goes back to the very title we ended up putting to the Takhayyul Nativeness and Emergent Issues series, because Omar said something about voice, right? Whose voice is being heard in the aftermath of such disasters. That's one of the things we are obviously dealing with 11 countries, we are from those countries as a whole team. And things are happening in the global south on those contexts. And then we would be finding ourselves in situations where we are listening to the accounts of so called experts of the region. And we need to do a couple of things. One is we need to make ourselves to, I mean use this as a solidarity platform, and, and have our conversations as the natives, but also change the very genre, the very rhetoric of this expertise conversations, like too professional we can't be too professional in times like this. And we shouldn't expect extreme professionality, which only comes from a position of privilege. I wanted to kind of state these as as the chair of today's conversation and turn to Hazal's question, Hazal asks in the checkbox, how should we discuss the Turkish state's inability to solve this crisis? Is it just failed fate bureaucracy slash corruption? Or are we seeing a form of necro politics, a selective let Live and Let Die. I think this is directed to Dr. Thing, the
Aslı Zengin:
The state is definitely necro politics, and I don't think the state is failing. I think the state is using its all kinds of technical structure to accumulate the resources in one hand, and preventing people from just distributing solidarity and support resources. Like for example, what we have witnessed in this particular crisis was this hyper ultra centralization of the state that ends up in one person's decision. So, so many people died under the rubble, because all these rescue teams were waiting for a signed paper, a signed authority from Erdoğan, going back to all the way to Erdoğan, so this kind of, you know, centralization block so many people from accessing people, and rescuing them from under the rubble. For example, there were miners who were very well trained, they are the most equipped group of people who could go into the rubble and save people. They have all the technical information, but they were just kept at airports for hours and days, rather than being sent to this particular destinations of the earthquake, or the army was not used put into force to actually also facilitate these kinds of relief efforts, rescue efforts, because of just as one man is making all these decisions. So, in that sense, I don't think it's the failed state. It's a very strong state, but it's just operating in a way that we don't like it to operate. This doesn't allow any space for civil society organisations, or any kind of opponent parties to create their own kind of, you know, solidarity networks, which we all did in one way or another, but under the pressure of the government, because the government was also appropriating so much relief materials while we were trying to transfer them from one place to the other, or there was so much corruption, and the corruption becomes another kind of economy that the state facilitates in this in this moment of crisis. So,this is one one answer, but the other one is the necro political part, it's a very long answer, I have so much to tell about this, even just with a single example of this person who couldn't produce a debt document for her parents under the rubble, but the late signals from their parents phone was detected under this rubbles. But then when the machines came in and excavated the robots, they couldn't find anyone. So there was no one to be found under the rubble. So they couldn't be listed as dead. But the person, the child knows that her parents are dead. So like, you get to see all these living examples of necro politics unfolding as a state structure through its bureaucracies. So, or just, you know, people had to die because of the prevention of other civil society organisations. So, the state actually let people die under the rubble. I think it's a very strong state with a very strong political agenda and structure, I would say, but I don't want to take up so much time because it's a very long conversation. There's so many examples, but I want to also hear from my friends as well.
Sertaç Sehlikoglu:
Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Zengin. Dr. Al Ghazi Do you want to add anything to this from your observations and expertise from Syria?
Omar Al-Ghazzi:
No, I think I think you know, what, what Aslı said covers everthing.
Sertaç Sehlikoglu:
Then if I may, I actually do have a question to everyone but beginning with you, I guess. And that is so when you were speaking I was thinking about like, think you use the phrase How did this just pass? Isn't it just another episode and this was something I've been kind of hearing and observing quite a lot. Not only, you know, how Israel was attacking the region just days after the earthquake, but also how the news about this entire earthquake that was obviously quite a kind of catastrophic one, just as one of the many mysteries of the Middle East as of somehow Middle Eastern people are ontologically equipped to experience, and live violence, let alone catastrophe. And I know your work, actually your entire scholarship deals with whose narratives are heard, how the narratives are changed, but I was kind of thinking quite a bit since the earthquake, and as a scholar who's living in the UK, about the notes the kind of concept of voice quite a lot, right. And this is the angle I was thinking that, you know, you might want to add a couple of notes to, because whether so having the voice is not whether you are making yourself heard, whether that voice gets into somebody else's ears, but also whether you have power over your own narrative, whether you're just a bystander, or when you're telling your narrative, it's used as something else, or silence or it's negligible. And then it's kind of it was also connected back to something you said, even earlier in your talk, adding another injury, like just to this,.I just wanted to kind of point this out whether you want to, well all of you actually want to add anything about how we think about certain parts of the world. And we all know that there's like there are precarity is attached to, you know, a range of parts of the Global South. But we also know that those precarities exist because of the global power dynamics.
Omar Al-Ghazzi:
Um, yeah, like, I think in terms of voice, I think the language that we, that comes more naturally to us, in this political moment, are kind of like a neo liberal take on voice, like on voice as kind of like, almost like a search for an authentic voice. Or, like, there's, there's that part, there is even like, when, you know, in your reference to kind of the multiple tragedies that people face and like, think about, let's say that the idea of resilience, which now like scholars from the Middle East are kind of completely rejecting because it's, it's somehow exceptionalizes the struggles of people there as if, you know, they, they have resilience in their genes, while while it is more more about like actually surviving, and you know, like, kind of navigate navigating multiple, multiple risks and precarity is and navigating really difficult life basically, and, you know, kind of holding on to the, to moments of joy and, and happiness, like I'm reminded, you know, of the, of the poem by by a colleague who says, like, we teach people how to live in relation to Palestinians, which, you know, is kind of, like that is that is, like, there's an insistence to live in that sense. But we can we also, like cannot escape thinking about structures of power, as you mentioned. So while, like, while kind of recognising, I think the, like the ability of people to, to navigate these, like these multiple layers of tragedies. There's also like structured ways that basically determine how we, how they talk about it as well. And I think, like if you listen to what Syrians say, like, the pain is just, it's just so much that oftentimes, you know, like, people are unable to actually articulate what they're feeling. Like for, for me, being in the West, being in the academy, I think, like one one way to kind of think about voice is not to overuse words like trauma, like you know, like this also, kind of like words from psychology that have become so commonplace in everyday language and the academy that I think like the overuse of certain words also dis empower people because you know, you're taking away the language that is meant for actually traumatised people but by overusing terms, we also kind of disarm the force behind words. So it is to think about, you know, our our positions and and think about voice in relation to power structures, I would say,
Sertaç Sehlikoglu:
Thank you. So Gregory Jackson is asking, how will the earthquake shaped the politics of the upcoming election? We'll Erdoğan get quote unquote, credit for leading in a crisis while suppressing other actors, or will he get blame again, between quote. And Fatemeh Sadeghi is asking about the role of external contractors and their role in the increase of the disease including the lack of accountability and transparency in engineering the infrastructure is something that has been talked about since day one in different ways and different levels and Meryem Zişan Köker is asking about how we can address the geopolitical implications of government's neglect or failure to adequately respond to natural disasters, particularly in vulnerable or politically marginalised communities. I want to also hear your notes about what can the global community do when it comes to offering humanitarian aid to the region, if the state is a such an aggressive actor in managing that received aid.
Sumrin Kalia:
First question is mainly about the Turkish local politics concerning the one I mean, I'm not on the ground. So I don't have like a lot of insider knowledge into the Turkey's the way local politics is coming across. But from what I hear, I do see that the government is getting a lot lot of blame. If I'm wrong, please feel free to correct me Sertaç, or those who are in were engaged in the local grounds and know more than I do. And perhaps this is not a good sign for him. But again, as I said, from my, what I gathered in the long run impact of Pakistani politics, how it changed, all the actors that were engaged at the time, were failing to provide support, and therefore they did a mass a lot of blame and when were eventually somehow voted out or pushed out.
Sertaç Sehlikoglu:
Thank you.
Aslı Zengin:
So on the third or the fourth day of the earthquake, or dawn went on to the TV and then he started scolding people, the victims of the earthquake, just with such an aggressive, in an aggressive posture. And so that was the first official state government speech and directed at the victims while they were still like under the rubbles was trying to be saved and there were still like living people screaming from under the rubbles. That was cruel, harsh and violent, and the oppositional party took a totally different kind of approach and he went to the earthquake zone and he was just you know, with people from the pro Kurdish party, he had a very soft speech that embracing people, trying to support them. So, that sets a kind of uni polarise, you know, the political discourses about the earthquake itself, the victims of the, for the victims of the earthquake, how these two parties are going to approach. And so that that speech itself made erdopan even more, you know, undesired among many because he is blamed for causing this disaster because his whole economic agenda, neoliberal economic agenda, has been based on construction business. So, he made all these leases, with contractors, with the architects with the large companies not necessarily follow the measures that were introduced legally after the 1999 earthquake. So, when all these buildings collapsed, so much, you know, corruption also emerged on the surface. People just, you know, collected material from the buildings and then saw that actually, they were not built according to the earthquake prevention measures. And all this corrupt economy just after its emergence, in the face of this devastation, Erdoğan was the person who signed all these agreements. So in a way now, he totally lost loss of support, and Adıyaman for instance, I can speak more intimately about Adıyaman because I spent some time there with this feminist organisation. Adıyaman was actually Erdoğan's representatives are ruling the Adıyaman. So now he came to Adıyama while we were there, of course, we didn't see him in person but the all day everybody was just you know, talking about this visit and cursing because he asked for certain kinds of forgiveness, Helallik. I don't know how to translate this into English. It's an Islamic, you know, gesture to ask for some kind of, you know, forgiveness. Usually people ask for it at the moment of death, whether you're giving your forgiveness to this person to the d and people just you know, collectively, you know, chant Yeah, we give our forgiveness to this person. So that's the moment of like, ultimate forgiveness. So, he was asking for forgiveness from people then that discourse circulated among people. We are not going to give him any kind of forgiveness. We're gonna give him hell?, we're gonna give him curse. It totally unleashed this, you know, frustration, disappointment, anger, rage, directed against the government itself. So, all these feelings are now shaping up the political space in Turkey. So, it's not an easy answer this or that black and white kind of, you know, answer I have for your question, but, it's also a moment of possibility of a political hub. Like all these coalitions are also emerging in the face of this aggressive state attitude and in the absence of the state, especially in the first week of the disaster, and so civil society organisations, political parties, other you know, activist groups started mobilising their own resources and their own connections, and they were trying to get to the earthquake zone, and they become more interaction with each other. So it is a devastation yet at the same time, it's another moment of crisis that just you know, gives birth to new kind of, you know, formations or political collaboration and coalition. And so that's what I find the most interesting, even beyond elections themselves. For me, that's, that's how the streets is shaping up how the community is shaping up in terms of this alternative political agendas, and how this political agendas are speaking to each other. In this very moment, I find it very powerful that I hope that I had lost about the politics in Turkey in a while, but now, the history is, so you know, always surprising. So again, being in the earthquake zone interacting with all these other organisations, seeing the kind of, you know, empowerment people are just, you know, creating all together was very inspiring.
Sertaç Sehlikoglu:
And Dr Al-Ghazzi.
Omar Al-Ghazzi:
Yeah, like, I'm not going to kind of add anything, but I will just say, like, for, like, the least we can do is to kind of add, you know, maybe for for listeners as well, I know, like probably many of us already donated money. But like in Syria, even you know, there isn't like the even capacity for many Syrians to get involved. And, you know, we can't really speak of like, organisations that are dealing with the situation as part of a civil society, but I think like particular Syrian led groups, like Molham team, for example, like kind of a rescue and aid group and the White Helmets as well, like they are, they're really like kind of holding the you feel almost like they're holding the foundations of, of what hopeful politics could emerge, at least in in, in rescuing people like who literally saving lives, and kind of involving Syrians in the in the aid effort as well. So I think they're worthy of our support.
Sertaç Sehlikoglu:
Thank you. Thank you, everyone. I have to say, I think I met with friends and colleagues in London a couple of times, in last one month. Every time we have, aside from doing an intellectual exchange, our priority wasn't that, our priority usually is just having that touch, sharing our intellectual minded pain, I suppose, which is exactly how I'm feeling, which is why it's a little bit difficult to wrap up this conversation. But thank you very much for your time. Thank you very much for being part of this conversation and for your insights. I hope there won't be too many emergent issues for the Takhayyul team to continue podcast series, but when there's something, we have a team to put things together and and hopefully to change the genre of any conversation in the aftermath of such incidents. Yes, thank you very much.
Omar Al-Ghazzi:
Thank you.
Aslı Zengin:
Thank you.
Sumrin Kalia:
Thank you everyone.
Sertaç Sehlikoglu:
Thank you very much.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
