‘Unspeakable’: The Pain of the Turkey-Syria Earthquake Still Felt by Western Students | News

Alp Polat studying at a table with traces of an earthquake in the background.

Catherine Jo/GAZETTEE Earthquake image courtesy of the European Union for Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid

Sarah Dahan looks down as her phone lights up with text. It’s from her aunt in Syria, messaging the family chat group.

“Tell me, how’s everyone doing?” Nora, Dahan’s aunt, asks the family, many of whom also live on nearby streets in Aleppo, Syria.

“Update me – on what?” Dahan replied, unaware that her family had just suffered one of the deadliest natural disasters in history.

The news has not yet reached the media – a 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck Turkey and Syria overnight, leaving many in rubble, homeless or dead.

“It’s indescribable,” said Noura, Dahan’s aunt.

The earthquakes, which began on February 6, have claimed more than 50,000 lives in Turkey and Syria. More than 1.9 million survivors have taken refuge in temporary shelters, tents and container homes in Turkey, while between 55,000 and 200,000 are left homeless in Syria. They add to the nearly two million people who were already living in refugee camps after the 12-year civil war.

Dahan, a second-year consumer behavior student from Aleppo, Syria, sits at her desk trying to complete her studies, but all she thinks about is her family back home. She is one of 175,000 Turks and Syrians living in Canada who felt the shock of an earthquake 8,000 kilometers away.

For many Syrian students, this is not the first time they have experienced this kind of trauma.

Maya Al-Masalmeh, a second-year psychology student from Daraa, Syria, says news of the earthquake triggered flashbacks of the first bombing of her city in 2011. She was one of the 52 percent of citizens who were displaced from Daraa 10 years earlier.

Watching the images that appeared on social media of the impact of the earthquake on the citizens of Syria, inflicted psychological and physical damage on Al-Masalmeh’s health. She describes many sleepless nights and days when she couldn’t bring herself to attend classes or go to work.

While dealing with post-earthquake trauma, the pacifist says her teachers were understanding of her absence, allowing her to take a week off for her mental health.

She believes her professors were expecting the many Turkish and Syrian students to ask for accommodations, after witnessing the horror and damage from the earthquake on social media. Al-Masalmeh said her painful memories of the war left her feeling numb to the tragedy of the earthquake, and longing for a better future for her people.

“I was unable to cry physically and mentally,” says Al-Masalmeh.

After the first shock of the earthquake, the Dahan family took refuge in their cars until the morning, waiting for the aftershocks to stop. They described the horror of the earthquake as endless, saying it was worse than the bombing they witnessed during the Syrian civil war.

Noura told Dahan that her younger cousins, ages 9 and 10, continued to shiver and vomit for hours after the initial shock. They are among the millions of children in Syria who have never had a normal childhood – lived through 12 years of civil war and now deadly earthquakes.

“Their whole childhood was horrible,” Dahan says.

Although news broke in the media hours after thousands had already fallen victim, Dahan and her immediate family in Canada kept in touch with those in Aleppo through their group chat, checking in with them frequently.

Her class was marked by constant efforts to keep in touch with her family abroad.

Alp Polat, a fifth-year physiology student from Elazig, Turkey, was another student who, given the impact of the earthquake on his family, could not think about his schoolwork.

Alp Polat, April 4, 2023.

Sophie Bouquillon/Gazette

Polat, whose cousin was displaced from his home in Hatay, Turkey, because of fractures in his building, says he finds himself constantly worrying about his cousin and other victims in Turkey. It made it difficult for him to devote his attention to his assignments and school work.

Polat can’t help but think about how much more needs to be done to rebuild his hometown in Turkey.

Polat isn’t the only student feeling helpless away from home. Sofia Merkan, a first-year medical science student from Ankara, Turkey, says she is doing all she can by donating, but there is only so much she can do when she is more than 8,000 kilometers away.

“I feel very disconnected here,” says Marjan.

She explains how difficult it is to watch videos of people in Turkey struggling under rubble, and wishes she could do more for them.

“There’s a sense of guilt — you can’t really be there for them,” Dahan says. “You can’t do much when you’re outside [of the country]. “

Merkan says she didn’t know the extent of the damage because power lines in Turkey were affected by the earthquake, making it impossible for anyone to reach them. People outside Turkey have not been able to contact their families to be tested, causing more distress for family members on both sides of the world.

Polat believes that Turkey’s weak infrastructure is responsible for the earthquake’s large-scale destruction of residential buildings. He says that many of the buildings are built on floodplains and fault areas, which makes them highly vulnerable to earthquakes. Morjan adds that homes in Turkey are built of porous materials, which can make them collapse quickly.

“It was very devastating to the community,” Polat says.

He took his cousin and other displaced residents to the homes of their relatives, afraid to return to homes they felt were at risk.

The earthquake also set back Syria’s efforts to rebuild the country in the aftermath of the civil war. Besides the sanctions imposed on Syria, Dahan says many have been left behind because humanitarian aid could not reach them.

The urgent need to receive aid was a matter of life and death for those trapped under the rubble of their collapsed homes.

“The whole country really needs help,” says Dahan.

Although the Syrian civil war has reached the current ceasefire point, the economic crisis and worsening poverty remain. According to Al-Masalmeh, many Syrians suffer from electricity, water and internet cuts. Syrians had already been battling a months-long cholera outbreak, and now that the earthquake has struck, many are taking refuge in makeshift shelters with minimal sanitary standards.

Two months after the initial shock of the earthquake, media coverage has begun to drop dramatically, but Polat believes that while the world is looking in the opposite direction, the crisis is getting worse. Temporary shelters in Syria and Turkey are overcrowded with displaced citizens, making access to toilets, running water and showers scarce.

Going forward, Polat says these displaced people will have difficulty finding housing, jobs, and, in general, difficulty returning to their normal lives.

“This is likely to have an impact over the next 10 years, I would say, on these people,” Polat says.

Citizens in Turkey and Syria still live unsure of what tomorrow will bring, while residents abroad are doing their best to donate and raise awareness as much as possible. Those in Canada, and at Western University, do all they can to support their people in any way they can.

“I know we are far away, but we still see them,” says the pacifist.

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