Rights Violations Continue to Increase and Diversify
on the First Anniversary of the February 6 Earthquake
5 February 2024
According to official figures, 50,783 people lost their lives and 115,353 people were injured as a result of the Maraş-centered massive earthquakes that hit the country hard on 06.02.2023. According to the results of the damage assessment study conducted by the Ministry of Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change, the total number of houses categorized as for urgent demolition, collapsed or heavily damaged was determined as 518,009. The number of houses with moderate damage was estimated at 131,577 and the number of houses with minor damage at 1,279,727. In light of these data, 2,273,551 people directly faced housing problems after the earthquake. Recently, Murat Kurum, the then Minister of Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change, stated on a television program that “we lost 130,000 people in the earthquake.”
Although relatives have been reporting missing persons, mostly children, since the first moment of the earthquake, no satisfactory explanation has been provided to the public regarding the number of missing persons and the related allegations in the intervening year.
As the first year of the earthquake is about to end, we see that the problems of shelter, nutrition, infrastructure, education, health, environment, property, discrimination, etc. continue to increase in the affected cities
After the February 6 earthquakes, İHD’s local branches in the earthquake zone prepared reports on the rights violations and problems faced and presented these to the public. We are witnessing that most of the problems identified in the reports submitted by our branches have still not been resolved, and some of them have not even been resolved in any way, and even new cases of victimization have occurred.
The fact that the earthquake occurred in the early hours of the morning at 04.17, that most people ran for their lives into the streets without proper clothing, and that they were exposed to winter conditions at the same time, created the greatest difficulty for them to take shelter in open spaces.
In the first days of the earthquake, since no steps were taken to provide shelter, thousands of people with no means tried to solve their housing problems in solidarity by taking shelter in open spaces such as marketplaces, greenhouses, parking lots, in tents set up by some volunteers and with their relatives and acquaintances living in rural areas. In addition to such solidarity, the Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency (AFAD) and other relevant public bodies, whose main duty is to carry out activities for the rescue of life and property, health, food, shelter, security, property and environmental protection, social and psychological support services in disasters and emergencies, failed to manage the earthquake crisis. In general, we had determined in our fieldwork and interviews with the public that the state institutions were not sufficiently involved in the first week.
Today, one year after the disaster, people are still trying to solve their housing problems on their own. A series of problems such as the fact that the construction of container cities started about four months after the earthquake, that they were completed in stages, that their number is insufficient, that the container cities are not in compliance with international standards, and that families of four are forced to live in 21 square meters of space are still pending.
In many tent cities built in the fields, there is not even an elevation concrete to protect the tents from rain, mud, etc., while water drainage systems have not been installed. Survivors of the earthquake who tried to protect tent floors from water and mud with materials such as pallets, etc., which they found on their own, had to deal with water and mud entering the tents after every rain.
Further, our interviews revealed that staff people working in temporary service in the container cities faced mobbing by people in the management and that especially women employees were not able to speak out about the harassment against them due to the fear of being fired.
While there are still people living in tents, the vast majority of people living in tents are Syrian refugees.
According to official data, the number of Syrians under temporary protection in the region affected by the earthquake is 1,738,035. Approximately 46% of the Syrian population in the region are children between the ages of 0-17 and 3% are elderly people over the age of 65. These population data show that there is an asylum-seeking population that needs support. Moreover, it is known that this figure is higher with the unregistered refugees.
Healthcare Services are Still Insufficient.
In the aftermath of the earthquake, state-owned hospitals were generally unusable, which led to serious health violations, including violations of the right to life.
One year after the disaster, there are still not enough hospitals built. In addition to the lack of healthcare personnel, the prefabricated buildings, containers and tents that have been set up side by side are far below the capacity to meet the healthcare needs of citizens. For example, the Hatay Training and Research Hospital (city hospital), which was built by spending tens of millions of TL, cannot be used and is awaiting demolition. Healthcare services are being provided in containers set up in the car parking lot of the said hospital.
Education and Training Services are almost non-existent.
Another issue identified by our local branches in their reports was that keeping children away from educational activities would affect their academic development, that children should be educated in safe areas, that their housing and other needs should be met in the care of both families and teachers, and that psycho-social support should be provided urgently to all those affected by the earthquake. Unfortunately, the state failed to provide the necessary services in this regard and citizens were left to their own fates.
As of today, education and training activities are continuing in the cities affected by the earthquake, but there are basic problems that reduce the quality of education such as the distance between where families reside and the location of schools, the fact that public transportation is still very inadequate in the cities, the Ministry of National Education’s implementation of mobile teaching only in container cities, the fact that students from several schools receive education in some school buildings because temporary prefabricated schools in line with standards have not been built in place of the damaged schools, and therefore the class populations are high.
Discrimination Continued in the Aftermath of the Earthquake.
İHD had determined that the othering-discriminatory discourses against Syrian refugees increased even more in the aftermath of the earthquake as revealed by its observations and interviews in the field since the first day. The reasons for the increase in such discourse were the black propaganda on social media that the looting incidents were carried out by Syrian refugees, racist discourses, some racist groups coming from outside the affected cities mingling with the public, and spreading unfounded discourses targeting Syrian refugees. Unfortunately, discriminatory and marginalizing discourses and practices against refugees continue.
Public health and safety were not taken into consideration in debris removal and building demolition works either.
Our findings show that electricity, water, and natural gas services were not adequately restored, roads and sidewalks were damaged as a result of debris removal works were not repaired, and there were mudflows in some cities, whose infrastructure completely collapsed and became unusable after the earthquakes.
Demolition team members lost their lives due to lack of safety and health precautions. Irrigation activities are not carried out in almost any of the buildings where debris removal works are carried out.
The crates of the trucks used during the transportation of excavation to the storage areas are not covered with tarpaulin etc. material to prevent dust spread.
It has been observed that the priority in the selection of the location of landfills is not to minimize the negative effects of construction and demolition wastes on the environment and human health but to prioritize logistical opportunities. Experts state that the asbestos emitted from construction waste poses a significant threat to public health.
With the urgent expropriation decision, neighborhoods, first-class agricultural lands, and olive areas in some of our earthquake-affected cities were expropriated for the construction of TOKİ houses. In our previous reports, it was determined that this practice was not in the public interest and even to the detriment of the public. With the urgent expropriation decision, the places where people have built their cultures and earned their livelihoods for hundreds of years are forcibly evacuated and peoples are subjected to forced migration. Despite the stay-of-execution decision (e.g. in Dikmence neighborhood in Hatay), construction companies continue their work and first-class agricultural lands and centuries-old olive trees are plundered.
In addition, lower-income groups cannot benefit from on-site transformation and ownership rights, even though their residences, which are registered as warehouses in the Land Registry and Cadastre Directorates but for which services such as electricity, water, and natural gas are paid, have been destroyed due to the earthquake. Also, the solution offered to survivors of the earthquake under the name of ownership rights and on-site transformation consists of many families owning the property they have worked for years to acquire by borrowing again. The real solution to eliminate victimization should be to declare the earthquake-affected areas as Special Disaster Areas.
Further, the declaration of many places in the earthquake zone as reserve areas, the subsequent vague statements and discourses, and the construction of cities without considering the principle of participation increase the concerns of the right holders.
In general, many violations of rights ranging from the right to life, to right to education, right to health, right to environment, and right to property continued since the first day of the earthquake.
The Human Rights Association states that its findings show that the violations of rights in the first year of the earthquake continue to increase and diversify and that it will follow up the process to eliminate these violations.
HUMAN RIGHTS ASSOCIATION