Those who were sleeping, those who
were awake, those who were just going to bed, those who were on
the road… Almost everyone living in north-western Turkey started
shaking. As if by a demonic coincidence, Hindemith’s ballet
piece “the Daemon” was on air at Açýk Radyo at that moment.
The demon burst in on our homes and was trying to suffocate us.
The demon’s dance continued, continued and continued… The
earthquake lasted for 45 seconds. The longest 45 seconds of the
world… As if it would never come to an end… Within those 45
seconds, familiar spaces turned into coffins. They now appeared
very unfamiliar. We hit the streets, we gathered in gardens, with
neighbours and relatives. From our hand radios we heard people
screaming for help. We were surprised, we were overwhelmed; we
shivered. We didn’t yet know what had really happened.
Nothing would ever be the same
again; but we didn’t know that yet. In its first news item
issued 3 hours and 50 minutes after the earthquake, the Anatolia
News Agency shortly said that there were three casualties. The
Kandilli Observatory in Ýstanbul announced that the magnitude of
the earthquake was 6.7. That “magnitude” rather than
“intensity” was the correct scientific term, we would learn
later. That morning, we also didn’t know that the earthquake
would become an inevitable part-time job for all of us in the
coming years.
Tuesday noon, the Kandilli
Observatory corrected the magnitude as 7.4. Foreign sources said
it was 7.8. We were also unable to know about the exact epicentre,
but the number of casualties was more than three to be sure; much
more than three. But we never knew the exact number. Although the
figure announced as at least 30.000 by The Observer was never
contradicted, the state and the media first agreed on 15.000 and
then 18.000. Turkey had the world’s first earthquake where the
number of injured decreased in time! Some time later, we learned
that the government ordered 45.000 “body bags” from abroad.
Based on the official figures, it turned out that they had ordered
three bags per capita.
Although we never could know about
the exact number of casualties, reliable sources stated that
110.000 people had been affected by the disaster. The greatest
disaster of the century had also cost at least 5 billion dollars
to Turkey.
People from all around the world
offered a helping hand. Numerous search and rescue teams from
Greece, Russia, Japan, Israel, Britain, Spain and the USA arrived
at the disaster area. Turkey’s “remote neighbour” Greece
suddenly came closer and became a “neighbour“. When the
earthquake hit Athens three weeks later, it was our turn to help.
The reciprocity was so striking that the Greek Ambassador to
Turkey said that an official from the Turkish search and rescue
team AKUT was the second person to call him, following his father.
Meanwhile, the earthquakes physically reduced the distance between
the two countries by some two centimetres.
While international civil aid was
pouring into Turkey, it took the official authorities three days
to reach the areas worst hit by the disaster. In other words, it
was only civilians who were present in the whole area during those
critical “first 72 hours”, provided, of course, that they were
not sent back by the officials. During those long hours that
followed the earthquake, the then President Süleyman Demirel was
faced with a power cut in his home in Ýstanbul’s luxurious
Etiler district and he couldn’t communicate with anyone. Prime
Minister Ecevit was quick to send messages that “all wounds
would be healed” but was not in a hurry to explain how this was
to be done.
In time, people would for the first
time acknowledge the scientific fact that almost the whole country
was sitting on top of fault lines. President Demirel, who had
previously said that the earthquake was an “act of God” would
later shift his eyes from the skies towards the ground and say
that “the country was resting on a cradle”. It was at the same
time when we learned that there were no emergency plans for risk
areas.
Thousands of people were
complaining about the inertness of both civilian and military
authorities and the media was talking about “official negligence”.
It was not very clear how to rescue the gigantic Ýzmit TÜPRAÞ
oil refinery which, despite all warnings, had been built right on
top of the fault line many years ago and was now ablaze with
700.000 litres of oil in its storage tanks. Even after the fire
was extinguished, the refinery would continue to be an
environmental problem for its vicinity. In the end, a region which
accounted for one third of Turkey’s industrial production was
levelled off. The state, and with it, all of us, found ourselves
in a hopeless situation. The seismic waves were not so strongly
felt in the capital Ankara.
Life came to a stop in Turkey.
Everyone was driving to the disaster area, with their cars and
motorbikes filled with food and clothing. Everyone who knew how to
use a shovel, an electric lamp or an injector, everyone who knew
how to erect a tent, hammer a nail and dress a wound was there,
like blood rushes to a wounded part of the body. A huge aid
operation was launched, without waiting for the state to act.
Obviously, this was an uncoordinated and unorganised civil
mobilisation; almost the whole fault line was filled with bread
and milk. But it was indisputable that this was the first
“reverse migration” of the world. Boys with earrings and
ponytails, girls with short hairs and bags, young people who for
the first time saw dead bodies in their lives, worked day and
night to bury decaying corpses.
The media was also on alert. Fuat Kozluklu, from NTV news
channel later told that he had decided to use his projector for
helping rescue operations instead of broadcasting live news. Also
Açýk Radyo was turned into a ‘clearing-house’ starting on
the second day of the quake. The station was trying to match
resources with the needs through its “Earthquake Communication
Centre” established by numerous volunteers. An unlimited number
of messages were arriving via phone, fax and e-mail. ARDÝM (Açýk
Radyo Earthquake Communication Centre) later contributed to the
establishment of a huge communication network together with NTV,
ATV, Kanal 7 and some radio stations. The radio operated in this
manner for sixty nights and days.
We would get accustomed to pictures
showing bodies squeezed under the rubble, corpses carried with
bulldozers, houses collapsed on other houses, lives that had
collapsed on all of us, endless ruins, anxious and helpless people.
We would also get accustomed to the smell -the smell of death
which was in the air, on the ground and on people… Mother Nature,
so many times deceived by us before, was now playing her last
trick on us. Nothing would ever be the same again and we
couldn’t know what to trust.
Confusion, helplessness and a sense
of being left alone also caused a major psychological trauma. For
example, experts said that one could not start lamenting for the
lost ones, if they didn’t know where they were buried. British
psychologist Lorraine Sherr says that “lamentation is an act of
remembering the lost ones rather than forgetting them. For this,
you have to find a starting point, a grave”. For many, such a
starting point did not exist. The absence of a starting point
naturally resulted in the absence of an end point. Moreover, an
earthquake of such a magnitude did not seem to be a controllable
disaster like a railway accident, plane crash or fire. While we
could manage to find a rationale even for war casualties, the
deaths caused by the splitting of the earth merely resulted in a
great sense of hopelessness, a loss of self-confidence and also a
loss of confidence towards nature, which we had been destroying
for such a long time.
Although it caused so much agony,
the 17 August earthquake also urged us to focus on weighty
questions which we used to touch upon from time to time: Can there
be a state in the absence of the individual? Is the state an
external entity upon all of us whose acts cannot be questioned?
Was it “the people for the sake of state” or “the state for
the sake of the people”? It was these questions which urged us
to consider the earthquake as some sort of a “turning point”
which occasioned us to see life from a completely new perspective.
Notwithstanding what it said, the
state was this time unable to heal all wounds with its tender hand.
We were alien to the phenomenon of earthquake; we were unprepared,
untrained. Ignorance, disorder, lack of organisation and
cooperation were the factors that impeded the struggle for life. A
news item published in the daily Milliyet last August read:
“Almost all offices of the Turkish Red Crescent in Istanbul were
closed on Saturday and Sunday. Citizens wishing to donate blood to
the organisation were faced with closed doors”. The Turkish Red
Crescent, the symbol of compassion and self sacrifice, would later
be shattered by claims of gross misconduct and bad management.
While hi-tec equipment were waiting in the warehouses for sale,
“field tents” used in the wars of the 19th century were being
sent to the disaster area…
Starting in August 1999, the civil
movement raised its voice in an unprecedented manner. At that
time, another item on Turkey’s agenda was an amnesty law. The
draft bill allowed for the release of Haluk Kýrcý, a criminal
sentenced for the Bahçelievler massacre in Ýstanbul, while
prisoners of conscience were kept in jail. The bill was passed at
the Parliament within 20 hours and was submitted to President
Demirel for approval. Despite public reaction, Demirel said he
would respect the law rather than the reaction. In his column in
daily Sabah, Necati Doðru urged the Turkish people to revolt and
walk to capital Ankara. Assistant Professor Sami Selçuk, the
president of the Court of Appeals was one of those to voice his
objection. He said that the content of the new law was not fully
clear. In saying that “the law does not cover prisoners of
conscience, for example”, Mr. Selçuk hinted that it should do
so.
On 1 September a full-page
announcement appeared in almost all newspapers. Entitled “To the
Turkish People”, the announcement was signed by 101 NGO’s and
grass-roots organizations with widely differing world views,
objectives and beliefs. The civil awakening had urged them to come
together around a “joint reaction”. Stating that this
initiative represented the coming together of different sections
of the society around public wisdom, the officials at these
NGO’s declared that this consensus would continue into the
future. They said this should be regarded as an attempt by civil
initiatives to open space for themselves, since they saw that
problems in Turkey could not be solved if all tasks were entrusted
to the state.
The society had two basic
demands:
1) The Turkish search and rescue team AKUT should be acknowledged
by the state not as a competitor but as a civil complement, 2) the
state exists for the individual; it should acknowledge the
individual; this process requires civil participation and
governance.
Stating that volunteer
organisations who had played a major role in aid operations were
hindered although the state itself failed to provide adequate help,
the NGO’s demanded that their efforts be encouraged rather than
impeded. The decision taken by the Governorship of Istanbul to
block AKUT’s bank accounts, at a time when the organisation had
almost become a civil hero, is a good case in point. The NGO’s
Announcement was described as the “Embryo of the Democratic
Revolution” by Milliyet columnist Þahin Alpay, as a “First in
Turkey’s History” by Cumhuriyet columnist Ýlhan Selçuk and
as “Declaration No. 1 by the Civil Society” by Hürriyet
columnist Ertuðrul Özkök. Shortly thereafter, the number of
signatories to the Announcement reached 140 and AKUT officials
were received by President Demirel and Prime Minister Ecevit. The
demand for civil participation, however, would need a long
digestion period which continues into the present day.
Urged by the general reaction and
thousands of e-mail messages coming from all sections of the
society regarding the amnesty law, President Demirel, who had
previously said that he would not respect public reaction, quickly
changed his mind. Turkey’s ninth president felt obliged to
announce that “public reaction, in addition to the rules, was
the motor power of the system”. He then vetoed the draft bill in
one day, even before his advisers could submit him the print-outs.
President Demirel had vetoed the draft bill in order to
“establish accord with the rules of law, justice, equality and
the public wisdom as well the principles of equality and
generality of the Turkish Constitution”. It was the first day of
September. The world was observing the Peace Day. In their
announcements on the same day, the NGO’s had demanded governance
to act as the motor power of the system and the voice of public
wisdom.
During those days, President of the
Court Appeals Sami Selçuk was scheduled to deliver a speech for
the opening of the new legal year. The speech was expected to have
a powerful impact, and it really did. But at this point, we should
also mention the impact of a “foreshock”: An unprecedented and
shattering speech delivered by Ahmet Necdet Sezer, then the
President of the Constitutional Court, four months before the
earthquake. In his speech, Mr. Sezer stated that the freedom of
expression, “an absolute freedom that cannot be limited” in
his own words, formed the basis of democratic society and social
progress.
Referring to the decisions of the
European Court of Human Rights, Mr. Sezer said: “The freedom of
expression is one of the foundations of democratic society. It is
indispensable for social and individual progress. This freedom is
not only limited to the exchange useful or merely irrelevant and
harmless information and news, but also includes those which
question and shatter the state or some sections of the society.
Pluralism, tolerance and an open approach, which are indispensable
criteria for a democratic society, all call for this”. “Therefore”,
continued Mr. Sezer, “The growing international law of human
rights, which has become an indicator of a country’s level of
development, should be reflected upon our national legislation.
The constitution and the legislation should be revised and
universal standards set by international conventions should be
incorporated into our laws”.
The initial shock of the speech of
the President of the Court of Appeals was now being echoed by the
President of the Constitutional Court a few months later. Mr Selçuk
announced the beginning of a new era marked by rights and freedoms.
He said “The world and Turkey should transform themselves in
line with these criteria. When I look at Turkey, I see two
separate groups not listening to each other: An expanding and
blossoming people which managed to found the Republic, a people
which successfully passed the test of democratic patience and
maturity, despite all the traumas it had faced. Always fresh,
always standing on its feet… On the other hand, we have the
pathologically inert state, which comes several steps from the
back, a state which does not trust its people, a state which fails
to keep pace with its people. A free and autonomous individual
equipped with rights and freedoms, forms the basis of democracy.
Everything is arranged around this focal point. The state should
be impartial towards opinions and beliefs. Impartiality towards
opinions would guarantee freedom of expression, while impartiality
towards beliefs would guarantee secularism. What a democratic
society needs is a group of questioning and critical individuals,
rather than meek citizens. Barriers to the freedom of expression
always harm the society. Freedom of expression cannot be limited
on the grounds that it would be misused or result in the overthrow
of the democratic system. The democratic society should be brave
enough to tolerate intolerant and destructive movements. One of
the characteristics of democracy is that it always carries a
certain risk with it. Governments which cannot take the risk are
called dictatorships. The one and only guarantee of democracy is
democracy itself. Once the democratic dimensions of democracy such
as freedom, pluralism, critical rationalism and participation are
adopted, all principles, concepts and institutions will naturally
follow. Turkey cannot, and should not, enter the new millennium
with a Constitution which has almost zero legitimacy. I reject a
low-profile and corrupt democracy controlled by the big brother. I
want a high-quality democracy formed by equal individuals where a
free people will govern a free people for the free people.”
While the victims of the August
earthquake were living in tent cities and waiting for the
completion of their prefabricated houses, on 12 November, at 18:57
in the afternoon, the city of Düzce was hit by another earthquake
measuring 7.2. The earthquake had destroyed many buildings in and
around its epicentre Düzce. One week after the quake, the OSCE
summit started in Ýstanbul. While the earth was shaking and fault
lines were pushing each other, Turkey embarked on a shattering
journey towards Europe. Almost all European leaders and also US
President Bill Clinton pointed towards the path leading to Europe.
The OSCE summit, which had occasioned Mr. Clinton to visit both
the Parliament in Ankara and the earthquake area, was in the
nature of a rehearsal for the Helsinki summit to gather in Ýstanbul
shortly after.
During the Helsinki summit in
December, Turkey’s official EU candidacy process was launched,
an event for which the country had been waiting for 36 years. Two
years ago, the EU and Turkey were completely disregarding each
other, and now the picture completely changed. The EU, the most
ambitious international regional organization initiative of world
history, had for the first time offered candidacy status to a
country which had a Muslim majority.
The next day, some Turkish
newspaper declared that “Turkey was now in Europe”, but the
reality was somewhat different. The most challenging part had just
started and Turkey was being called to do its homework inside the
class. Turkey would make efforts to adopt the acquis communitaire
which comprised more than 100,000 pages of legal text, would try
to meet the Copenhagen Criteria, and would have to launch wide-ranging
reforms in the fields of human rights, freedom of expression,
trade and bureaucracy. Terms like “acquis communitaire”,
“road map”, “Copenhagen Criteria” and “harmonisation”
had entered our daily vocabulary, as seismic terms such as
“fault lines”, “epicentre”, “aftershocks” and
“foreshocks” did a couple of months ago.
The first year of “Nativity”
initiated by seismic waves had also seen the rise of another wave
coming from the depths of the society: “civil awakening”. This
movement, facilitated by Turkey’s becoming an official candidate
for the EU, has survived into this day and it seems that it will
continue to have considerable impact in the future.
The great efforts made by the
public and the members of the Parliament to resist the extension
of President Demirel’s term in office, the acknowledgement of
the fact that political stability was not at all related to the
extension of Demirel’s term, Demirel’s leaving the political
stage after 37 years, Constitutional Court President Ahmet Necdet
Sezer’s nomination as presidential candidate, the election of a
judge of civil origin who had been a staunch defender of democracy
and human rights as the country’s president, the entry of the
concept of “rule of law” into our daily terminology, the
rapprochement between Turkey and its arch-rival Greece, and lastly,
the cancellation of the public tender for the construction of a
nuclear power plant in Akkuyu, Southern Turkey, all manifest that
we had managed to draw lessons from the disaster.
Following the worst disaster of the
century, Turkey seems to have overcome the official approach, to
some extent at least. But we still have not overcome the sense of
anxiety and fear. An international team of experts, including Mr.
Aykut Barka -instructor at the Ýstanbul Technical University,
Eurasian Institute for Geology and also a consultant at the Açýk
Radyo Earthquake Consultation Group- state that, within the next
30 years, the probability of a major earthquake to affect a
greater area of Ýstanbul and the 20 million people living there
is 62 per cent. Reports published in respectable international
scientific journals also repeated the same figure, which has now
become a part of our daily lives. We do not know when the
earthquake will strike, but we know that it can be any time. We
also know that every day and every hour before the earthquake is
an opportunity that should not be wasted.
We are well aware of these facts,
what we are anxious about those we do not know. We are also not
sure that information channels are more accessible today than they
were before. We do not know if the necessary measures on the face
of such a high probability have been taken, we do not know the
soil characteristics of Ýstanbul, we do not know if the central
administration will be effective on the face of a disaster, we do
not know the current state of civil organisations, we do not know
the structure of the Turkish Red Crescent and the General
Directorate for Natural Disasters, we do not know where the funds
collected at the Disaster Fund are utilised, we do not know if
scientific data are being concealed from the public, we do not
know the exact number of casualties and the extent of material
damage.
But one thing we know for certain:
We have to mobilise the creativity of public wisdom and leave
behind the prevailing approach marked by pessimism, lack of
confidence, complaining and panic. Turning the expected earthquake
from an event dominated by “demons” and “body bags” into
the much-longed-for “social awakening project” still seems
possible.
Ömer
Madra - Þerif Erol, Acýk
RADYO 94.9
