Deren Ertas is a PhD candidate in history and middle eastern studies at Harvard. She was in Istanbul doing research when, beginning on February 6, 2023, a series of powerful earthquakes struck areas of southern and central Turkey and northern and western Syria. Following is a conversation with Ertas about her experiences in the aftermath of these devastating events.
Where were you when you first heard that a series of earthquakes had struck Turkey and Syria?
I was in Istanbul. It was an exceptionally cold Monday; a storm had hit the city the night before. I woke up to messages from friends in the United States who had been awake when the first earthquake hit. I immediately turned on the news. Having lived through the 1999 earthquake as a child, my second reaction was to turn everything off and tell myself I would have a typical day. I think this was a trauma response—if I don’t look, it won’t be so bad. However, I couldn’t concentrate on the documents I had been dutifully reading for the last few months and kept checking the news and social media. The library where I went to work was exceptionally quiet. I kept getting out of my seat to go to the public areas where there was at least the possibility to exchange sad and bewildered glances with strangers. I was there when I heard the news of the second earthquake, at which point I realized I needed to be doing something else.
How did you get involved in the relief effort? What organization are you working with?
There is something so pitiful about not being part of an organized collective at such a time. There is so little that you can do as an individual. I felt this particularly strongly because I was home, where I had grown up until the age of eleven. But I hadn’t lived in Turkey during my adolescence and adulthood, so I was a bit lost. I returned to social media, where a few of my trusted friends had posted about a call for volunteers from an anti-capitalist labor collective called Umut-Sen. I called them and then started walking to their offices.
My first volunteer task was translating safe zones and meeting places from Turkish to Arabic and Kurmanji. I stayed in the crowded office filled with young and old volunteers until about 10 pm, translating and brainstorming about ways to get clothes, food, heating supplies, and water to the earthquake region. At some point that evening, people from the collective arrived in various affected districts in Malatya, Maraş, Hatay, Diyarbakir, Antep, and Adiyaman. The next day, the work shifted to coordinating search and rescue efforts. Initially, we would contact people who wrote what they needed on various social media outlets. For example, we would see that a 60-ton capacity crane was required at a particular address, which then we would communicate to the volunteers on the ground, who would then try and find said crane and forward it to the address. Over time, people started contacting us directly. This work was highly stressful, especially in the first 72 hours after the earthquake. Once the search and rescue work ended, our priority shifted towards helping the survivors dealing with frigid temperatures and a lack of water, food, clothing, hygiene supplies, tents, blankets, and everything else they needed to stay alive. Getting the provisions to the villages was particularly important, whose populations more than doubled as people abandoned the cities for the countryside.
In the course of that week, I worked hard to find a way to get myself to the earthquake zone. Finally, a friend reached out, saying he planned on going with another friend. I also called a friend, who decided to join us. There was so much doubt surrounding the decision to go — would we be actually useful or a burden, one more mouth to feed and house in a context of absolute scarcity and lack? We decided to go anyways, taking everything we could need over the week we planned to stay there. We arrived in Malatya on the evening of the sixth day following the earthquake.
What kind of conditions have you encountered? What types of work did you do in the earthquake zone?
As it is now well known, the earthquake affected a vast area, roughly 400 km, more than the distance between New York and Washington, DC. I cannot speak about everywhere affected by the earthquake since I remained in Malatya the whole time. Malatya, unlike Maraş and Hatay, was spared the worst. Nonetheless, there were more than 3,000 collapsed buildings, and the city’s infrastructure received a huge hit. When I first arrived, there was no clean running water, all grocery stores and shops were closed down, garbage collection had been interrupted, and the only people on the streets after a particular hour were police, gendarme, and village guards. Search and rescue teams had left and machines were trying to clear the collapsed buildings. Government officials started arriving in the second week after the earthquake to assess damages to buildings that were still standing. I remember on my second or third day in Malatya, one of the buildings that the inspectors had claimed only to be “slightly damaged” (meaning that people who live there could enter it) collapsed following an aftershock. Understandably, this contributed to an already-existing atmosphere of distrust and insecurity. Due to the continuing aftershocks, many people left the city. At some point, around 70 percent of Malatya’s population had left for villages within the province or the neighboring regions. In the case of Malatya, children and women were virtually absent, having relocated to relatives’ homes across the country. And those who remained—refugees, workers, the poor—needed much support but weren’t getting it. Their homes were unsafe, so they needed to stay in tents or containers. However, these were not being provided except for in a few areas in the town center.
In responding to these needs, the Umut-Sen volunteers in Malatya worked together with the local branch of an Alevi organization called Pir Sultan Abdal Cultural Association. Together, we set up a soup kitchen and an area with tents for families to stay. We handed out second-hand clothing, blankets, heating stoves, diapers, feminine hygiene products, baby food, medicine. We also gave out hot food to around 150–200 people twice a day. Besides feeding the folks in the neighborhood, the soup kitchen provided a warm and welcoming environment where people could be together. We exchanged stories, shared our traumas, and strategized for the future over soup and bread.
What problems persist, and what reconstructive work is being done in the earthquake region now?
I left the earthquake zone towards the end of February, and a lot has changed. Speaking with my friends and fellow volunteers on mutual aid channels and following different kinds of organizations on social media, the reconstruction period will be long and difficult. Most urgently, people still do not have access to clean running water. Rebuilding the urban infrastructure, especially the water supply, must be a priority going forward. Secondly, construction debris, which contains asbestos, among other harmful substances, is being brought en masse to the countryside across the earthquake region. This poses a severe hazard to the environment and human life since asbestos exposure is known to cause lung cancer. Thirdly, there are differences in how locals and state officials think about the reconstruction of the cities that have been destroyed. One of the most important tasks ahead is informing people of the government’s plans for reconstruction and giving them a platform to organize collectively and share their perspectives. Besides these, many other lacks need to be addressed: psychological counseling for trauma victims, educational facilities for children and young adults, animal shelters, infrastructure guaranteeing that votes can be securely cast in the upcoming elections, and so on. Many vocational organizations, civil society collectives, and NGOs are working towards providing these to earthquake survivors regularly.
You’re a historian of the region—does your understanding of the historical relationships among polities and populations in Turkey and Syria inform your ability to help with relief operations?
My knowledge of Kurdish and Arabic has been helpful at different points. My familiarity with the region’s history facilitated conversations and endeared me to locals with whom I was doing relief work. This made it easier for us to trust each other and form lasting relationships, which I cherish today. But I think the most important thing to note here is that being part of the relief efforts influenced how I look at my work rather than the other way around. And in this case, by work, I mean not only my dissertation but also the more critical work and praxis of solidarity, which is an essential part of that reciprocal relationship we all want to establish with the communities whose pasts or presents we examine in our research.
What is the best way that people in the CMES community and the larger Harvard community can help?
One of the most important ways that CMES and Harvard can help is to collect donations and send them to various organizations working in the earthquake zones. Establishing a research project centered around earthquakes in the Middle East would also be helpful going forward, as this will certainly not be the last earthquake to hit the region. A part of this could be an interdisciplinary lab for thinking about how to reconstruct the cities in the earthquake zone in ways that take seriously local demands and the existing urban fabric while also prioritizing durability and sustainability. Harvard, and the surrounding educational community, have much expertise to offer in this field. Finally, I think that for fundraising or awareness-raising events going forward, it is important to continue highlighting the fact that Kurds, Turks, and Syrians were all victims of these earthquakes and deserve equal access to all relief efforts.