Is the Earthquake the Wrath of God?

Do not look at the title of this article and think it is a theology or engineering piece.

I borrowed this title from the Dutch rescue team that came to help with the earthquake. 

“What did you do that GOD punished you so severely?” they had asked.

Anyway, let the experts think about that part.

We have plenty of them in our country.

They are on screen every moment.

In this article, I will try to calculate the cost of “low morality” to society through a famous Yeşilçam film with a simple calculation.

February 6.

The disaster of the century that demolished 11 cities in the country.

We lost thousands of our people.

Thousands of our buildings collapsed.

Our cities and infrastructure were turned upside down.

I recently conducted an inspection in the center of Hatay province, one of the provinces hit hardest by the earthquake.

It has the air of a rubble city.

While the new city built on the basin of the Orontes River was razed to the ground, I could not see any damage to the houses built years ago at the foot of the mountain using traditional, old methods.

Multi-story buildings constructed on the riverbed were leveled as a result of soil liquefaction.

The Rönesans residence, where we lost thousands of our citizens, could not remain standing despite its 10-meter deep foundation because the ground was so poor, even though it was built on top of 3 basement floors.

Almost all buildings constructed in the last 25 years were destroyed.

Buildings whose projects were designed and approved by engineers, inspected, and granted occupancy permits were razed to the ground.

Our nation, which could not resist the RENT created by turning fields into plots—which scientists said should not be built on more than 3-4 stories—ended up in a worse state than before due to elastic movement just as it was about to get rich.

They lost their lives along with their property.

It is impossible to compensate.

15-story buildings built in apricot orchards in Yeşilyurt are being dynamited after sustaining heavy damage.

They thought that by increasing the zoning of their 3-story plot to 13, they had gained 3-5 extra apartments out of thin air.

However, nature would not allow for something that should not be, 

And it did not.

Both the homes they received from the air-zoning and their lives and loved ones were ruined.

We lost thousands of our people.

Thousands of doctors, engineers, teachers, and professionals, most of whom were raised with great material and moral effort.

They all tragically passed away.

May the Almighty treat them with mercy.

Whatever happened to Berlin, Stalingrad, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki happened to us too.

But with a different model.

Without aerial bombing.

The financial cost of raising this educated generation corresponds to a figure of more than 100 billion dollars.

Excluding the time it will take to raise them again and the emotional traumas. 

A construction process that will take 20 years to compensate awaits us.

The cost of rebuilding more than 400 thousand destroyed residences is also more than 100 billion dollars.

The cost of the belongings in the houses is around 10 billion dollars.

The infrastructure damage caused by the earthquake is estimated to be around 5 billion dollars.

Excluding the souls still not found, those who suffered limb loss, and mental health treatment processes, we have a loss of more than 200 billion dollars.

Yet, the ZÜBÜK film, which is hard to find for 5-6 years, adapted from Aziz Nesin’s work titled “ZÜBÜK”, produced by Türker İnanoğlu, directed by Kartal Tibet, and starring Kemal Sunal, had warned us in advance about what would happen to us.

At the beginning of the film, ZÜBÜK, defined by Metin Serezli as “someone who considers every way permissible for his own interests, does not keep his word, a swindler, egoist, trickster, immoral, treacherous, dishonorable, braggart, turncoat”, revealed the moral structure of a town.  

Nevra Serezli, whose honor was violated because she wanted to be a deputy's wife; the neighborhood's cunning tailor Şemsi İnkaya, who wanted the new zoning road to pass in front of his shop; the neighborhood grocer Nubar Terziyan, who tried to grab logs from the flood; the local businessman Ali Şen, a master of dirty tricks to increase his capital.

İbrahim ZÜBÜKZADE had outsmarted them all.

Hungry for rent, 

Ignoring systems and rules, 

Trying to get rich the short way, 

Opportunistic, 

Constantly belittling and humiliating educated people by accusing them of being godless, 

Trying to take religion and faith out of the sacred temple and insert it into daily social life for personal interests, 

Declaring the town's beacon of republican light, lawyer Burhan Bey, a heretic and accusing him of sedition for wanting a second mosque instead of a high school, 

Not letting snails be sold in a Muslim neighborhood by calling it a communist game, 

As camouflage, making the empty promise of building the country's largest mosque even though he did not pray, 

Passing himself off as, or being perceived as, a father to the poor and needy, 

The ZÜBÜKZADE system.

Whereas what did the great leader Atatürk tell us:

Societies that want to live comfortably without working, without getting tired, and without producing; are doomed to lose first their dignity, then their freedom, and then their independence and future.

What is left that we haven't lost?

Was it worth it?