It's Coming, It's Coming, “Earthquake-Resilient Cities” Are Coming

May the new year bring happiness and peace to us all.

Even if the NUMERICAL AND EMPIRICAL data suggests otherwise. 

According to the data of the algorithm that they call the engineering mindset—and sometimes even disparage—we will not be able to emerge from the vortex we have fallen into all that quickly.

We are going to take quite a bit of damage.

Some of our professors are talking about “Earthquake-Resilient Cities”, while others are talking about “Active Faults.” are talking about, 

Some say the Istanbul earthquake will have a magnitude of 7 to 7.5, while others claim the earthquake in Istanbul will not happen as expected.

I don't understand those subjects,

As for construction and buildings, I only understand enough to know that Turkey's building stock is dilapidated.

Especially those built before the Earthquake Regulation that changed in 2002 should be demolished and rebuilt.

Regardless of the year of construction, Ready-mixed concrete, ribbed steel, and 135-degree “Ribbed stirrup hooks” Unused buildings must undergo urban transformation as soon as possible.

However, these projects require vast amounts of money.

And no one has that kind of money.

It is not possible for them to have it either.

Perhaps the King of Saudi Arabia has it, but would it be a remedy for us!!!

Judging by the commotion at the Super Cup final, the answer is clear. 

On the other hand, there are neither enough materials nor skilled craftsmen.

The only thing available is graduates from universities, especially newly established ones, that lack infrastructure and academic staff. “The Underqualified Engineer”

Even if all of them were present, how will the buildings constructed after urban transformation PERFORM in an earthquake!!!

No one knows yet.

It is certain they won't be crushed like a sandwich, but it is unclear whether they will sustain heavy damage.

The housing business is not being handled by our “Qualified Engineers and Contractors” but mostly by our self-taught contractors who have a win-win relationship with municipalities.

I don't really understand if there is an economic equivalent to the concept fabricated as win-win,

But it is very clear that while we try to ensure we both win, we all end up losing.

Earth scientists “Gentlemen, do not destroy these apricot orchards,” 

If you lose your minds and insist on destroying them, we are using our last remaining money to dynamite and demolish the 10-15 story buildings we built by spending everything we had, including our burial money, on those “Apricot Orchards” where they told us not to build anything higher than 3-4 stories.

Look at Yeşilyurt, Malatya.

Perhaps those who swindled us with a made-up theory called “win-win” can also take the trouble to bury our dead.

Because we don't really have any burial money left. 

With the way things are going, let me try to explain what will happen to us—even if it isn't NUMERICAL AND EMPIRICAL—with a story from my childhood, and you can guess our fate yourselves.

We were still in middle school.

After school, my friends and I would take a tomato paste can, “those years when soda cans were still valuable and even the empty ones were saved”, and kick it all the way past the Avni Aker Stadium in Kavak Square, heading toward our home in the Ayasofya neighborhood.

There were no school buses or anything, 

Those were the years when you went to school either by walking or by municipal bus.

Usually on foot, if it isn't raining.

Times when savings were made, even if the transit pass was cheap.

Those who benefited most from its blessings the “cunning, opportunistic Second Republicans” constantly belittled, despised, and labeled as fascist, the old poor but planned, growing with accelerating momentum on its path “Kemal’s Turkey” built schools everywhere.

Modern Turkey, By keeping the “cost-benefit analysis” economic calculation in the background, it built schools even when the number of students was small and sent teachers even to remote locations, guided by the understanding of a social state. 

Anyway, I won't go on too long, lest they find me old-fashioned, a professor of the old Turkey. 

Those were poor but happy days, when we would park the tomato paste can we kicked all the way home from school in front of the grocery store across from Yavuz Selim Stadium, and eat hot bread fresh from the Stadium Bakery with tomatoes and onions.

The whole country was like a family, where children were everyone's children, a father could feed and educate 10 children, in the era of single-channel television and the Cold War.

While we played games on the sidewalk, and sometimes in the middle of the road, dribbling the tomato paste can past each other and seeing who could kick it the farthest like a golf ball, one of our friends would block the minibuses and try to collect 'tribute'.

The drivers would actually enjoy it, pretending to be afraid of this child acting tough, and would give him money as a 'tribute' in the form of pocket money.

We wouldn't stray from our path, and we would eat that hot bread with tomatoes and onions with such appetite that there were even days we would get a second one.

I cannot get the same taste from the most expensive wine or whiskey now that I used to get from the soda I bought when I could afford it.

Let us also write here that alcohol is harmful to health so that we do not set a bad example for the citizens.

Almost all of my friends who I went to school with in the same class and grew up with in the same neighborhood have made something of themselves.

There is even one who is the most critical bureaucrat in Istanbul.

By the way, I saw that one of them did not make it when I clicked on a news story while browsing the internet. 

“Contractor shoots his son” I was curious about the news, so I looked at the details of the report.

I saw that the contractor father had shot my childhood friend, who used to block our minibuses and demand protection money, in the heels.

I do not know if anyone thinks that the performance of urban transformation carried out with these incompetent, self-taught contractors during an earthquake will be any different from this story. 

While writing this article, news of a 7.6 magnitude earthquake came from Japan. It is reported that 58 people have lost their lives so far (we lost more than 50,000 of our people in the February 6 earthquake), and very few buildings were damaged (more than 400,000 of our homes were reduced to rubble). 

Judging by the images circulating on social media, there is no other choice but to do what Japan has done, which emerged from such a massive earthquake with so few casualties, so little damage, and no panic. 

What has the Shintoist or Buddhist Japanese done?

They have established an effective “Control and Inspection” system.

They have regulated building heights and building-soil compatibility. 

“Qualified” and “Specially Trained” “COMPETENT ENGINEER-CONTRACTORS” have controlled the entire system. 

They have cast out the “UNTRAINED CONTRACTORS” from the system. 

And then, they have achieved the “EARTHQUAKE RESILIENCE PERFORMANCE” they were expecting.

However, in a society where “Basic Moral Principles” are not established, even if it is possible to put these articles into effect, it is not possible for them to function.