How Kurds and other minorities are discriminated during earthquake aid operations

Many days have now passed since the devastating earthquake of February 6th in the Turkish-Syrian border region. Most of the bodies are still being retrieved from under the rubble. The earthquake has so far claimed almost 40,000 lives on both sides of the border and thousands more will follow. The focus is now on taking care of the survivors as millions of whom have become homeless.

Lack of state care and rescue?

Again and again we heard people complaining about the lack of state or official help. Many survivors reported how they heard voices everywhere under the rubble for the first 48 hours, but over time they became quieter. There are countless videos of people reporting how they were able to save people alive or dead even with the scarce resources that are available.

Epicenter Pazarcik: Why did help barely arrive?

Some of these videos come from Pazarcik, the epicenter of the earthquake. Until shortly before the earthquake, Pazarcik had almost 70,000 inhabitants and is traditionally a predominantly Kurdish and Alevi district, located in the province of Kahramanmaras. After the Maras pogrom in 1978, in which hundreds of mainly Kurdish Alevis were murdered by Turkish-Sunni fundamentalists, the demographics in Pazarcik also gradually changed. Nevertheless, Pazarcik still consists to a significant extent of Kurdish Alevis, Kurdish Sunnis or Turkish Alevis. Although Pazarcik was the epicenter of the quake, aid was sparse in the region. Instead, representatives of the ruling AKP party, including Turkish President Erdogan, came here, spoke in front of the cameras and left again. On the first night after the earthquake, Muharrem İnce, the former presidential candidate of the largest opposition party CHP, came to the city and witnessed on camera that there was hardly any government support and that the rescue work hardly took place. An elderly woman from the region, filmed by news channels Rudaw and VoA, complained in Kurdish that it was all happening because she and Pazarcik are Kurdish. She said, “There is no state, no team, no anything here. We were created as Kurds, what should we do? Why are you making that distinction?”

“The region is abandoned and left alone”

In the first days of the earthquake, people mostly helped themselves in the winter cold and the only official help was the Kurdish-Alevi city of Dersim. In the villages of Pazarcik the situation was worse. Many villages were badly hit and hardly any help arrived here for days. Gradually and under pressure from outside, the Turkish state disaster protection agency AFAD managed to provide tents for Pazarcik and the villages. For the supply, the people were again mainly dependent on voluntary helpers and self-help. From Germany alone, several people from the area traveled to the region to help themselves and reported that the region was largely left to its own devices.

Different places, similar situation

The situation was similar in other areas of south-eastern Turkey with similar demographics. In Elbistan, another district of Kahramanmaras with a large Kurdish-Alevi population, in Dogansehir near Malatya with a similar population structure and other towns, it was similar to Pazarcik.
In Hatay, on the border with Syria, the destruction was particularly great, and yet the aid reached this region much too late and only too sparsely. Hatay and the almost completely destroyed Antakya have a significant indigenous Arab-Alevi population. The situation here would probably be worse without the help, campaigns and rescue teams from local and external people.
In Adiyaman, which is mainly inhabited by Kurds and was extensively destroyed, there was hardly any state aid, as was also recorded by an ARD camera team.

The Turkish state praises its own crisis management and punishes legitimate criticism

But little of all this was seen in the mostly aligned Turkish media, instead the crisis management of the Turkish state, with President Erdogan at the head of civil protection, was praised. It was remarkable to see how the rescue teams and the aid were mainly seen in the big cities of Kahramanmaras, Gaziantep or Malatya, where the Turkish ruling party AKP traditionally has its strongholds. As voices of criticism grew louder, on the second day of the earthquake, Turkey’s President Erdogan turned angrily in front of the cameras and threatened the ‘provocateurs’, which led to the arrests of critics. Access to Twitter, through which many buried victims communicated, was blocked. While the tragedy in Turkey was less than a day old, the Turkish army was bombing areas in northern Syria and more recently killed a civilian in Kobane in a drone strike.

Lynch law against Syrians and Kurds

In the whole confusion of the earthquake, the reports of looting gangs in the earthquake areas increased in the meantime. The culprits were quickly identified. In the social networks, but also by politicians, it was spread that Syrians were mainly responsible for the looting. The reports quickly became serious and there were a number of cases of lynching, which the Turkish security forces tolerated and were partly responsible for themselves. In Adiyaman, five registered helpers from the mainly Kurdish town of Diyarbakir were taken away by police as looters, tortured and then dumped naked outside the town.

Forgotten Victims of the Earthquake: Syrian Refugees

Syrian refugees in Turkey are a forgotten group of victims of the earthquake. The earthquake region in Turkey hosted hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees, mostly in the provinces of Hatay, Gaziantep and Kilis.
Little was reported about the fate of Syrians in the country. It can be assumed that they are at least as badly affected, especially as many have lived in slums with simple dwellings. Instead, false reports once again pinned down the Syrians as the culprit, thereby increasing the hostile mood that already existed. A homeless Syrian from Hatay reported in front of a camera that he was ashamed to have stolen, but it had to be because they had been left out by the aid and he had small children to feed.

Chaos reigns in Syria

While in Turkey, despite all the problems and the lack of state crisis management in some regions, aid may arrive in a roundabout way, the situation in Syria is much more dire. For days, the earthquake-hit region of north-west Syria received no aid. The rescue operations were correspondingly dramatic. In contrast to Turkey, Syria lacked everything possible. Closed borders were cited as the main reason, although it would theoretically have been possible to send the aid through the Turkish-controlled borders on both sides of the country.

Afrin: Systematic discrimination against Kurds

Discrimination in earthquake relief is very clear in north-west Syria. The Afrin region was hit the hardest by the earthquake along with some towns in Idlib and the city of Aleppo. Since the Turkish military offensive “Operation Olive Branch” in 2018 and the subsequent occupation of the region, Afrin has been ruled by Syrian opposition groups, which were combined under Turkish leadership in the Syrian National Army (SNA) and the Syrian offshoot of al-Qaeda, the terrorist organization Hay ‘at Tahrir ash-Sham (HTS). Afrin is an originally Kurdish region. After the invasion, over 300,000 Kurds were expelled from the region, most of whom now have to live in the neighboring al-Shahba region around the town of Tall Rifaat. In Afrin, on the other hand, the families of the mostly Arab opposition groups and non-local Arabs, mainly from Idlib, moved in.

Jindires: No relief supplies for Kurds

The situation in Jindires near Afrin is very dramatic. Jindires was mostly destroyed or badly damaged by the earthquake. There are said to be over 700 dead and 3,000 injured. More than 500 of the dead are said to be the Kurds who remained in Jindires. Now that aid is beginning to reach Jindires, the dimension of the distribution of goods is becoming apparent. Eyewitnesses and other sources in the region tell how armed opposition factions would confiscate the incoming aid and distribute it among their own units and families. A local Arab admitted on camera that the local Kurds would not receive anything. Meanwhile, chaos has broken out in Jindires, there are reports and videos of skirmishes over the relief supplies.

State discrimination in Aleppo and al-Shahba

Elsewhere, in the areas controlled by the Syrian regime, there is a similar picture. Although Aleppo was badly hit by the earthquake, troops from the Syrian regime have been blockading the districts of al-Sheikh Maqsoud and Al-Ashrafiyya, which are mainly inhabited by Kurds, for months. The situation is similar in the al-Shahba region, which is mainly inhabited by Kurds and which, in addition to a blockade by the Syrian regime, also suffers from constant attacks from Turkey.

Even aid convoys are politicized

Even aid convoys from the ailing Autonomous Administration of northern and eastern Syria were not allowed to reach the earthquake areas for days because the political rulers in north-west Syria even politicized humanitarian emergency aid. Representatives of the Syrian regime demanded 80% of the aid for themselves, so that the aid can even reach Aleppo. In the areas of Syria occupied by Turkey, the aid convoys were not allowed to enter the earthquake areas for days, despite the wishes of the local population and some representatives of the so-called “interim government”.

Humanitarian aid knows no difference

While the international community has left Syria out of earthquake relief efforts, and UN officials have recently had to admit omissions, certain communities in Turkey, as well as in Syria, are being discriminated against in earthquake relief efforts. The suffering of the people is the same regardless of ethnicity or religion. Humanitarian emergency aid must not come at the expense of another group. For this reason, Bedran Ciya Kurd, co-chairman of the Office for External Relations of the self-government in North and East Syria, emphasized that the aid convoys should help all those affected “without discrimination”. Whether this will be the case seems questionable at the moment, as there are increasing reports that SNA groups and groups loyal to the regime are confiscating and stealing the aid.