Global significance of the earthquake in Turkey and Syria

Below is the transcript of a video statement delivered by WSWS International Editorial Board Chairman David North from Istanbul, Turkey. The video is also included below.

Last month, on February 6, two devastating earthquakes, measuring 7.6 and 7.7 on the Richter scale, hit the city of Marash in southern Turkey, near the Syrian border. Within nine hours, these earthquakes claimed the lives of from 100,000 to 150,000 people. Actual losses may actually be higher.

Global significance of the earthquake in Turkey and Syria

This tragedy cannot only be described as a natural disaster. Of course, the movement of tectonic plates is a powerful geological phenomenon. However, the response and impact of these events is socially determined.

The real responsibility for the loss of life lies in inadequate preparation, which is the product of two interrelated factors. The first, the dominance of politics by purely national considerations, and the second, the determination of politics on the basis of profit, and the accumulation of wealth.

And she did not take the measures that should have been taken, despite all the warnings of scientists.

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I am now in Istanbul. Behind me, the part of the historic harbor is an area that, if an earthquake strikes this city, as seismologists have widely predicted, will cause devastating loss of life here and throughout the city, perhaps in the millions.

This is a situation that has global implications. We live in a world where we hear almost weekly, if not daily, about disasters in one form or another.

A few days ago, a train derailed in Greece. The disaster is in East Palestine, Ohio. The common denominator in such events is always the subordination of life to profit. Such events are taking place in the shadow of a pandemic that has claimed the lives of millions and millions of people around the world.

And even further, not far from where I am currently, across the Black Sea, the war in Ukraine threatens to escalate into a nuclear catastrophe.

What conclusions should be drawn? We live in a social system, an outdated economic system. The capitalist system, the nation-state system, and capitalist class rule are totally opposite to the needs of modern mass society.

The earthquake that had such a devastating impact in Turkey and Syria is a global and historic event. It will have political consequences. It brings to mind another historical episode of a similar nature, the great earthquake that struck the city of Lisbon in Portugal in 1755.

At that time, the defenders of the established feudal structure argued that the catastrophe, which cost tens of thousands of lives, should not disturb faith in the existing system, and that what happened was part of a divine plan. No matter the scale of the loss of life, this was never questioned. It was all for the good. In fact, man lived, they claimed, in the “best of all possible worlds.”

This concept was vigorously attacked by Voltaire, who wrote his famous book, Candide, in response to this empty theory of reactionary optimism. No, we didn’t live in the best of all possible worlds. We lived in a world that had to be changed, where life and society could be subject to human action.

This set in motion and accelerated the process of reason and scientific thought, leading to the American Revolution of 1776, the Great French Revolution of 1789 to 1794, and all the great social struggles of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to change the world. , and work through human action to create a society that organizes conditions for the benefit of humanity.

One must fight for the recognition that what happened here, and all other events which have such a devastating effect on the conditions of human life, will give rise to a new and powerful revival of revolutionary thought.

This is the perspective of the International Committee of the Fourth International, the Trotskyist movement. Be part of that fight. Take part in the struggle for socialism. Building a revolutionary movement for the working class capable of renewing society and transforming it for the benefit of all humanity.

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