Hello everyone,
In general, I love speaking, writing, producing but I had a hard time writing this article because I haven’t been able to gather my thoughts for the past week. There were two devastating earthquakes in my homeland Turkey on February 6, 2023, covering Antakya, MaraÅŸ and the surrounding 11 provinces.
Earthquakes, the first with a magnitude of 7.7 and the second with a magnitude of 7.6, on February 6, which was called the disaster of the century; It caused great destruction in Kahramanmaraş, Kilis, Diyarbakır, Adana, Osmaniye, Gaziantep, Şanlıurfa, Adıyaman, Malatya, Elazığ and Hatay.
I would like to begin my article by expressing my sincere condolences to everyone. I put the title as stay in purgatory, the feeling is literally that and we have to cope with this purgatory somehow. Because as a society, we have to. Let me describe the area affected by the earthquake as follows: Imagine that a country almost as large as Germany or a large state in America was shaken with a magnitude of 7.8! The result is tens of thousands of dead, close to a hundred thousand injured, casualties are unknown!
It’s a big trauma. Along with the pain of our people, we also witnessed the disappearance of a whole history. Thousands of years old churches, mosques, bazaars, cultural heritage museums have all disappeared. In the middle of winter, such a disaster makes all people shudder, I believe. A weak happiness was that millions of people became one heart and started aid campaigns.
In addition to Turkey, Turks from all over the world and all good and beautiful people of the world have supported Turkey’s pain. As many people as conscientious and patriotic, they all worked like bees. I wanted this article to be a thank you to everyone, including the world-famous names who felt our pain and did not spare their support with their shares and donated. Search and rescue teams of many countries came to the aid with their magnificent dogs. I would also like to pay tribute to Proteo, the brave dog of the Mexican rescue team who sacrificed itself so heroically. I think a street should be named after it.
World brands launched campaigns. We admired them all amid this sadness. I wish condolences to Syria due to the earthquake and wish them to heal their wounds. The support of the world is very important, because the trauma is huge! The world is like a seesaw, sometimes one geography, sometimes another is affected by these disasters. Times like this, it’s time to share!
I end the article with Tolstoy’s sentence: “If you can feel pain, you are alive. If you can feel someone else’s pain, you are human.”
Work of art: Jeannine Dar
I leave the links of charities in Turkey for nice people who want to donate. In difficult times like these, support feels like God’s miracle. I wish miracles to multiply. God be with us all. Whatever you give will come back to you as goodness and beauty. I wish you to stay healthy until the next article.
Charities to donate:
AHBAP
https://ahbap.org/bagisci-ol?mibextid=5zvaxg
AKUT
https://www.akut.org.tr/bagis-yap?mibextid=5zvaxg
AFAD
https://www.afad.gov.tr/depremkampanyasi2
UNICEF TURKEY
https://bagis.unicefturk.org/guneydogudepremi?fbclid=PAAaZU5UEwBKkk25g5EtpwwW QX7w9V8ldtnFR2wOKdEvoCIaiXD8t7pM4NzN8
(The digital works belong to a Turkish artist by Alpgenart, each figure in the images tells about the people, institutions and events that have made the news and left their mark in Turkey this past week.)
TUGBA YAZICI
instagram: tugbayaziciofficial
Facebook: Tugba Yazici
