In the aftermath of the earthquake

On April 23, 2025, a 6.2 magnitude earthquake struck Istanbul. With the pain of the 2023 Kahramanmaraş-centered earthquakes still fresh and their wounds not yet fully healed, this earthquake brought fear and anxiety to us all.

Everyone agrees on the need to build earthquake-resistant cities, but there are few who clearly articulate how this can actually and exclusively be achieved.

If you do not implement a planned economy, prevent zoning from becoming a tool for rent-seeking and enrichment, and limit the free market—even if it scares some—you will remain vulnerable to every kind of disaster and calamity, including earthquakes. If you are not wealthy enough to live in a well-constructed building on solid ground, your survival in an earthquake will depend entirely on the ethics of the contractor who built your home.

I would like to share one statement and two news reports I witnessed after the earthquake. They are all actually interconnected.

A system decayed by its intellectuals, its press, and its politics, and a people living in poverty.

A citizen who considers himself one of the country's leading intellectuals and a world-class scientist stated immediately after the earthquake that there was no other choice but to leave Istanbul. Did he ever stop to think how many of the approximately 18 million people living in Istanbul have the financial means to immediately leave the city they live in? Does he not know that not everyone has inherited wealth like he does, and that it is not possible for everyone to establish a life elsewhere whenever they wish? Being a scientist requires not only having knowledge but also expressing opinions with the responsibility of an intellectual toward society. Of course, one should not expect this from someone who admires the fascists of the September 12 junta, who were among the architects of the hell we live in today.

It was one of the days following the earthquake we experienced, perhaps April 28, when I saw a news report while watching the evening news on TV.

In one of Istanbul's districts, an apartment building had been sealed following the earthquake on the grounds that it was heavily damaged. However, according to the report, the residents had broken the seal, entered the building, and continued to live inside. A female reporter in her late 20s entered the building with a microphone in hand and, in an interrogative tone, asked the female resident speaking from behind the door questions like, "Why did you enter the building? Don't you know it's damaged?" She also spoke with neighbors in the area, as if confirming a crime committed with witnesses.

Did the reporter presenting the story and the channel's editor-in-chief or editor—whoever they may be—feel any shame at all for the way this story was presented? It is not difficult to understand from the appearance of the building that its residents are poor. It is clear that people continue to use the building because they have no other options.

Have they become so detached from humanity that they cannot understand that someone continuing to live in a building with a risk of collapse is in a desperate situation? The woman trying to answer from behind the door is most likely experiencing the shame of the poverty and helplessness they are living through.

In reality, she is not the one who should be ashamed. Those who should be ashamed are the modern-day representatives of the journalists who, in the 90s, couldn't stand up to the big shots and instead spent their time chasing pests in neighborhood bakeries.

If the woman speaking from behind the door had said, "Yes, we live in this damaged building because, unlike your boss, we cannot take out cheap loans from public banks and then refuse to pay them back," would they have aired it?

In a video I watched on the X platform, a primary school teacher shows the food that students in the class brought in their lunchboxes. The food some of the children brought is extremely modest and in small quantities. Some of the children even seem embarrassed that the food they brought is being filmed.

The mildest word to describe the teacher who filmed the footage is thoughtlessness and inexperience. I wonder what kind of training a person who will shape the lives of little children goes through to get to that position. However, what I am truly angry about is something else.

There is a news report regarding the nutritional problems of children in Turkey, the link to which I have added below.

* The date of the report is 2022. Considering that economic conditions have not improved since then, at best, the data in the report remains the same.

We are faced with a country that waits for possible earthquakes like sacrificial lambs and cannot properly feed its children. At the same time, there is a mass of people who repeat clichés in a chorus like, "a game-changing country, we are at every table, UAVs/armed UAVs, the world's how-many-th largest economy..."

Do you think a country with millions of poor people struggling with housing and nutrition can be a game-changer?

Happy May 1st.

• https://www.bbc.com/turkce/articles/cek28x98pvyo