Three feminists Kübra, Şevval and Ezgi from Turkey, who participated in search and rescue operations in the earthquake region, talks about the effects of the earthquake on women, children and LGBTI+s and their experiences in the disaster zone.
“When we talked to each other, I felt that both I and they were mutually empowered. This is a great need for all of us.”
Gender-based digital content platform, Çatlak Zemin, talks to three feminists Kübra, Şevval and Ezgi, who went to the earthquake region in the first days after the earthquake and participated in search and rescue operations, about the effects of the earthquake on women, children and LGBTI+s and their experiences in the disaster zone.
When did you go to the disaster zone? How long and where did you stay?
Kübra: I left for İslahiye on the second day of the earthquake. I stayed for about five days. We stayed in a place in İslahiye where Neighborhood Disaster Volunteers were directed by AFAD [Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency]. There was a coordination center of AFAD next to the fire department building. We stayed in a camp close to it.
Şevval: I stayed in İslahiye for about a week and then in Adıyaman for two days.
Ezgi: As a group, we filled out a form with the call of the Neighborhood Disaster Volunteers and voluntarily joined a group that went to the area. Our journey took 24 hours because there was a great lack of coordination. After we got to the airport, there was not much about the departure time of airplanes. There was also not much about the coordination of the teams arriving there. Very experienced search and rescue workers were kept waiting at the airport for a long time, just like us. Firefighters, first aid teams and doctors were also waiting. Finally we were put on a plane, but it took a long time for the plane to take off because there was no communication with the airport where we were going to land. After the plane took off, we circled over Ankara many times and we could not land at Maraş airport because I think there was a small earthquake close to our landing and the damage to the airport was even deeper. Then a military plane landed where we were going to land on the grounds that it was an emergency landing. We had a team of 170 people on our plane; there were volunteers and professional search and rescue people. So it was a plane with a large team. It consisted of people who had to go directly to search and rescue. When we couldn’t land in Maraş, we had to land in Elazığ. We also waited on the plane in Elazığ, and then we were able to land at Maraş airport at night. We thought that a vehicle would pick us up when we landed because a petition had been written to the governor’s office stating that a search and rescue team had arrived and that they needed to be picked up by vehicle. In other words, they had been informed in advance, they had been updated because the arrival time was delayed, and all the necessary communication had been established. But even though we waited there for a long time, we could not reach these people, so we had to sleep in that ruined airport at night. Our team leader took the initiative and went out himself to look for a vehicle for an hour because no vehicle had arrived. Finally, he stopped a municipal bus that provides transportation within the city and appropriated the bus, saying “I need to take the search and rescue team from here to İslahiye”. We loaded all our equipment onto the bus and went to İslahiye. When we arrived, we actually wanted to go directly to the field. This time, we learned that the address was not fully defined for us. Even though Neighborhood Disaster Volunteers are independent, they should act under AFAD. The lack of an address made many people feel bad because we had come to go to the field, we had come to do something, but in addition to losing 24 hours on the road, we also lost time when we reached the area. And all of this happened in this way even though we informed them in advance. I stayed in İslahiye for a week as a search and rescue volunteer. After a week, I moved to Adıyaman.
How did you work in the disaster zone?
Kübra: I involved in search and rescue activities since the day we went there. We worked in buildings damaged by the earthquake and in the wreckage.
Şevval: Actually, we did everything. The first day we were there, it was mostly carrying things. A cat was locked in a damaged house in the area we were in. While its owner was being rescued, it escaped from her arms and could not be found afterwards. The woman had been injured and transferred to Istanbul. While continuing to be in contact with the woman, I also tried to direct the teams. The cat was actually very close to me, I could even walk there, but we were not allowed to leave the team and go outside. The teams didn’t want to go because the area, where the cat was, was very troubled. In fact, the only thing to do was to approach the window with a crane and get the cat from there with food. Later, the cat was saved when it spread on Twitter. Even though I was so close, I couldn’t go and intervene. When I participated in the wreckage work, I did everything I was given, such as using a jackhammer, filling buckets with rubble, emptying buckets. Unfortunately, no one was found alive in any of the wreckages I visited. When I didn’t go to the wreckage, I did work such as organizing the campsite, setting up tents, kitchen responsibility, tea-making, door watch. One day, as a group of feminists, we took special permission to leave the team and visited the tent city in a civilian way. We learned about the needs of women and children there and conveyed the deficiencies to our friends from the Feminist Solidarity Group for Disaster. We tried to solve some of them with our own contacts.
Ezgi: We first went to İslahiye as search and rescue volunteers, but on the other hand, there was a lot of destruction there, so we had basic knowledge but no professional training. At first, we thought that people like us who came as volunteers, who did not have professional training, could support other issues. But because mainly there was a need for search and rescue workers, we also worked in the wreckage for a week. The information about these wreckages came to us only from AFAD. We could not work at addresses that AFAD did not give us, and AFAD’s determination of these addresses was based on pressure from the relatives of those under the wreckage. There was a lot of information flowing through Twitter and various channels, but there was no system to coordinate it. In the incoming applications, the information had to come directly, the relatives of the person had to wait by the wreckage, find a search and rescue person, cling to them and say “Carry out a work here” and they had to stand by the wreckage for AFAD to direct someone there until their relative was pulled out. We were working for six hours and resting for six hours in rotation and we were not allowed to leave the camp during our rest. During one of our rest hours, we took a leave of absence and went to the tent city in İslahiye and visited 15 tents and chatted with the women. We talked together about their experiences after the earthquake and their experiences in the tent city. It was good both for them and for us to have one-on-one contact. On the one hand, we were able to see for ourselves how this process works for women. When we arrived in Adıyaman, there was already an established network there. There was a tent city formed by many non-governmental organizations, professional chambers and various components, as well as a center for sorting and distributing the incoming aid. Within this system, we also worked as volunteers. At the same time, while sorting, we were determining the needs we had identified. We contacted people, determined the addresses and tried to deliver them to these places. We went to villages and neighborhoods and tried to chat with women and LGBTI+ people where we went. We had contact areas in the warehouses, tent city and distribution. This part of the work was very valuable for me.
What are your observations on the experiences of women, LGBTI+s and children?
Kübra: In all these work, we had the opportunity to meet with people who were affected by the earthquake or victimized directly in the process. There is a general deprivation situation regarding the lives of women, LGBTI+s and children. There is no electricity, no water. It is a bit fine during the day, but it is very cold at night. Since it was the first days when we were there, the support had not yet arrived. Therefore, children and women were actually on the street, in the cold, somehow lighting a fire and gathering around that fire. Basically, as the aids arrived during the process, I realized that it is the women who follow up on all these supports. They are trying to find something for those children, to arrange a place to stay, to arrange something to eat. They are also waiting for their relatives under the wreckage. Of course, the situation is different for children. There is a constant crisis there and they are trying to make sense of it. When we talked to the women, we heard that they needed support, but they shared it very quietly, only when they saw someone close to them.
Şevval: The story of a woman in the Zaman Apartment is engraved in my mind. During the earthquake, her husband had jumped down from the third floor, she had thrown her children to him, then the building had collapsed and she had died. She thought of her children before her life and that’s how she lost her life. Most women were found dead in the wreckage either on their way to their children or in the nursery. Because of their role as mothers, their first thought at that moment was their children before themselves. I will never forget the child named Sevgi for the rest of my life. She was a sweet child who was always smiling in the midst of so much evil, death and wreckage. Although most of the time I tried to push my emotions to the background, I couldn’t hold back my tears when Sevgi hugged me. Afterwards we danced and played games and she included me in her joy. In the warehouse in Adıyaman, for example, women were coming and taking the needs of their children and themselves, and since some of the aid came from Europe, their size had different symbols. The volunteer man there couldn’t give her underwear and couldn’t understand the size, so she asked me, as a woman nearby, to help her. I didn’t know that size range either, but I was able to figure it out by eyeballing it and the woman was relieved to see me. The situation in the tent city was very bad. In the first tent we entered, there was a paralyzed baby who needed to be connected to a vaporizer. His mother was keeping the baby alive by spraying his nose. The mother’s arm had been broken during the earthquake and taken in a cast, but because she could not care for the baby comfortably, she had broken the cast and just wrapped it. She said that the bones probably won’t fuse properly, but what else is there? Her husband is not dead and has no injuries, but she has to take care of that baby with a broken arm because she is a mother. There was another six-year-old boy in the same tent and he was never settled. He always wanted to go out and play. Since there were no play tents in the tent city we were in, his mother and father were trying to somehow keep him occupied. There was not even a street in that tent city, which was set up at the bus terminal. The tents were placed randomly, there was no organization. LGBTI+s were almost ignored. I didn’t see any work or help for them. They probably kept to themselves completely, they were afraid that their identities would be exposed. I read on Twitter that a trans woman covered her face and silently asked for help at the aid point.
Ezgi: This is what happens with women. There have been two earthquakes in a row and it is actually a very traumatic situation. Not only have people lost their relatives, but they are also left alone with the trauma caused by the earthquake. While experiencing this, women are also the ones who continue the pace of life. For example, something I have also observed in men is that the man in that family has the same experience, but the woman still has to think about finding food for the child the next day. She has to think about how to set up that tent and how to provide heating. She has to continue the pace of life. The burden of care, the burden of housework, which normally falls on women in the daily routine, increases exponentially. As conditions become more difficult, the effects of this on women’s lives deepen. There has been a traumatic event, and before they can experience the pain of it, they have to calculate where they will live afterwards, what their children will do, and their own safety. They feel a great “responsibility” for this. There is also a security problem for women in tent cities. There is no place that can be used as a road in the tent cities, especially in the ones set up by AFAD, they have built the tents side by side, the tent city is very dark. There are very few toilets and showers, only one or two for 250 tents. These get already frequently clogged. They are in a very bad situation in terms of hygiene. In addition, showers and toilets are usually in very nooks and dark corners. In tent cities, which are not lit at night, it is almost impossible for women to access these places. Since there is no hygiene during menstruation periods, the possibility of health problems increases. When they have a health problem, they are either ashamed to tell or have to ignore it. In Adıyaman, there has been no water in the villages for a long time. Since there is no water, women have to constantly get water from a common fountain and carry it home. They also do this to prevent children from getting lice. Although there is a heating problem, they light a fire to heat the water, and since there is no basin, they find a suitable surface to bathe the child and ensure that the child does not get sick, and at the same time, they try to ensure that the child does not get lice. In some places there is food distribution, but in some villages, there is no food distribution at all. In terms of food, women also have to do the work of identifying aid sites to provide water and find the necessary supplies. For a long time, aid did not reach the villages. This is a serious problem. People stay in cars. There is no toilet. When she has her period, there is nothing she can use because there is no aid for three or four days, so there are no pads. Many women faced this. LGBTI+s also do not particularly enter the aid queues. They do not want to enter crowded places. Because of the serious danger of homophobia and transphobia, there is a situation of not being able to access the things that are delivered there. In such a way, they also have security concerns. Therefore, there are many topics that need to be discussed separately for LGBTI+s. In addition, women’s childcare burden has also increased. Young children especially wake up at night from the cold and do not sleep. It is the women who have to ensure the safety of the children in the tent during the day, outside there is wreckage everywhere and there is a lot of risk. They have to keep the child occupied all the time. There is often no activity area where children can play. In tent cities, there is usually a situation where women do not leave the tent. Since the children are in the tent, women cannot even leave the tent and go to the eating area. There were only men in the eating area and when I asked them why don’t you go there, they said, “It is not a suitable area for children, others may be disturbed, and we have to take care of the children, so we take the food and go back to the tent.” That’s why there are women who stay in their tents for days, and when any aid is distributed, they cannot access it because they have to take care of their children. Women’s needs such as pads and underwear are not supplied to women by men because they are embarrassed and cannot ask for them. In this respect, women have difficulty in accessing the things they need even if they are very close by. There is also a situation like this for children. They are severely traumatized by the situation they witnessed, they may even have difficulty entering the tent, they do not want to enter closed spaces. They often wake up at night, there are those who have various differences in their behavior, those who suddenly lose their temper in playgrounds. In fact, serious work needs to be carried out for children. At the same time, children have lost their schools, their neighborhoods, their order in an instant. This has serious effects.
You can read the full interview here.