The Daily - The Deadly Earthquake in Turkey and Syria

Episode Date: February 7, 2023

On Monday, a giant 7.8-magnitude earthquake and an aftershock almost as big shook the earth in southern Turkey. The quakes sent ripples through neighboring countries, but the area along the Syrian-Turkish border was hit particularly hard.Thousands of people have been killed, and dozens of cities have been gutted.We hear from witnesses on the ground about what happened when the devastating tremors hit.Guest: Ben Hubbard, the Istanbul bureau chief for The New York Times.Background reading: The initial earthquake struck before dawn, shattering lives in a region already rocked by war, a refugee crisis and economic distress.In northwestern Syria, nearly three million people displaced by the country’s civil war were already living in precarious conditions.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. 

I'm Nurbegum Demiral. I'm 27 years old. And I was thinking last night, my life was perfect, my house very sweet. Oh, I love my life. And now I can't go my home. I can't go my home. I can't go my sweet home. I woke up with a very noisy song, talk I was thinking about this. I will die. I'm gonna die. I was thinking like this. And I just waited.

It was maybe one minute and 30, but it was feeling very long. And then I just took my stuff quickly and I was saying, go, go, go, go to my neighbors. Go, go, go, go, go to my neighbors. Go, go, go, go. And we went to outside. And when I see the street, I was feeling, thanks God I'm here and I'm outside. And everywhere was looking crowded. A lot of people shouting, crying and shaking. Last weekend we had snow and everywhere was snow and it was rainy and it was cold.

A lot of people went outside without any jackets. And I gave my scarf to them. You know, I stayed alive and I survived. Yes. Thanks God. I am saying always this. Thanks God. From New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro.

This is The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. A powerful earthquake has killed thousands of people in Turkey and Syria and left dozens of cities in ruins. Today, Sabrina Tavernisi speaks to witnesses on the ground and my colleague Ben Hubbard reports from Istanbul. It's Tuesday, February 7th. Sabrina? Hi. Hi, it's Sabrina. Hi. Sabriya? Garo, hi. It's Sabrina.

Hi. Hi. Garo, can you identify yourself for me? Tell me your name, your age, and your occupation. My name is Garo Paylan. I am the member of the Turkish parliament representing Diyarbakır. I am 50 years old. How are you doing?

So-so. What can I say? I'm in Diyarbakır now. I'm just visiting the demolished buildings now. It's terrible. Even here, we are 250 kilometers away from the epicenter and still we have tens of demolished buildings here. What does it look like, Goro? It's terrible. It's terrible because the cities were not ready for this earthquake.

There are tens of demolished buildings, and moreover, nobody can dare to get into their homes now. People are afraid. Yeah. People are afraid to get into their homes now. People are afraid. Yeah. People are afraid to go into their homes, and it's freezing cold now. And they just try to sleep in their cars. People are devastated. Some people are still trying to save their loved ones under the rubble.

And some people are watching because they are living a shock now. Every 15 minutes, we are just feeling an aftershock. There are major aftershocks and minor ones as well. And what are you doing on the ground there? I'm just trying to organize the humanitarian aid. And because there is not, we don't have enough rescue teams. And people are so angry about it. Yeah, because people are still trapped under the rubble right now, right?

Yeah, people are trapped under the rubble. And we were hearing from them. But nowadays we don't hear from them anymore, most of them. Because this night, these hours will be decisive. Time is our enemy and cold is our enemy, and I don't think that we will have people, we can take people out of those rebels alive tomorrow or the day after tomorrow.

So we need really rescue teams all over rescue teams coming from all over the world tonight or tomorrow morning because maybe later will be too late. Goro, is your family okay? What's happening with your relatives? Yeah. I lost three of my relatives in Malatya, unfortunately. Oh no, Gaurav.

I lost one of my second cousins and his wife and his children. And one of his children is severely injured. So, unfortunately, I lost three of my relatives. Oh, my gosh, Gaurav. I have to be strong. I have responsibility for these people. So I'm trying to help them. Garo, I'm going to let you go.

It sounds like you may be up for a while. Are you going to sleep? What's your situation right now? No, I'm going to let you go. It sounds like you may be up for a while. Are you going to sleep? What's your situation right now? No, I'm not going to sleep because the rescue teams are working and they are trying to organize this humanitarian aid. And we are trying to help for the people to just be in a good condition tonight because it is freezing cold. No, I must help them because I'm responsible. Hello?

Hi, is this Selwa? Hi. Selwa, hi, this this Salwa? Hi. Salwa, hi, this is Sabrina Tavernisi. Tell me your name, your age, and where you are right now. My age, 50 years. My name, Salwa Abdushrahman. I'm from Idlib City. One moment, please.

Yes. I can't hear you clearly because I'm in a place far away from my home. Where are you, Salwa? I am in a tent. A tent? Yes. There are a very big number of children, infants, women, men, 20 or nearly 30. So you're sitting in the tent together in the dark. It's very cold. I'm very tired and I need to see my family, my mother, my sisters. They are in a place away from me. Do you know if your mother and your sisters are alive?

Do you know if your mother and your sisters are alive? Oh, Salwa, I am really sorry. We need to introduce a machinism to get the injured out from under the rubble. From yesterday to this day, there are people under the rubble. You need the help from the machines to help dig people out from under the rubble. Yes, we need full international help. We'll be right back. Ben Hubbard, you have been reporting on all this from Istanbul, where you are based for The Times.

Tell us about exactly when and where these earthquakes occurred. The first one struck early morning on Monday, February 6th. It was between 4 and 5 a.m. and it was quite cold in this area, so there was really no reason for anybody to be outside. Most people were at home sleeping. The second one happened the same day, but later on, this is early afternoon, sort of after lunchtime. This is in central Turkey in the south near the border with Syria and just sends out these massive, massive waves that ripple through a number of the neighboring countries, but really hit this area along the Syrian-Turkish border very, very hard. And just how big were these earthquakes? They were both big. The first one was a 7.8 magnitude.

This is the first time in more than 80 years that Turkey had had an earthquake this big. Wow. The second one was slightly smaller. It was a 7.5, but still enough to do serious damage. So Ben, walk us through that serious damage that these two earthquakes have inflicted. And I should say it's late Monday evening where you are. It's early afternoon here in the U.S. on the East Coast. So things may change.

But at this point, what do we know? And I wonder if we can start with Turkey and the impact there. So the epicenter of this earthquake was near the city of Gaziantep, and it just rippled out from there. The death toll as it stands now is somewhere around 1,650 people.

Many more people than that wounded, lots and lots of people still missing. And we've moved on to sort of the rescue stage now where work crews are going through a lot of these sites to try to see if they can hear voices, see if they can find anybody who's still alive and get them out. And also, of course, trying to find bodies

and bring them to their loved ones. How many cities and towns in Turkey have been affected and what kind of square footage or mileage has been affected? We're talking about four or five major cities and then many, many smaller towns scattered over a stretch of more than 250 miles. So we're talking about a huge, huge swath of territory. Some rural areas were decimated. Other cities that were quite a ways away also had just large buildings come down into big piles of rubble. There are these sort of baffling videos where you'll have one building that's just completely come down like a house of cards and is surrounded by other buildings that look very similar that don't appear to have much damage. And there is kind of an almost random quality to the destruction.

And there is kind of an almost random quality to the destruction. And I think for people who are living in this area, there's a random quality to who ended up losing loved ones and who ended up surviving. Right. Ben, just pulling back a moment, what should we understand about this moment in Turkey to put these earthquakes and all that damage you just described into a larger context? So these hit Turkey kind of, I think, in a difficult time and also in sort of a difficult place. And so in terms of time, we're talking about, you know, the country's been dealing with very, very strong inflation. Inflation reached 80% late last year, which is about 10 times what it was in the United States when everyone was very worried about inflation there. So this has really eroded family budgets. It's made it very, very hard for people

to buy the kinds of things that they're used to buying. Prices have really been off the charts. So there was a lot of tension in the air politically before this came across. And then in terms of the location, this is very close to the border with Syria, where you've had this terrible, terrible civil war that's been going on for more than a decade now. You have 3.6 million Syrian refugees in Turkey, many of them living in this area. Many of them living in very, very impoverished conditions, very, very difficult conditions, very vulnerable to any kind of a shock. And so, you know, just people who don't have a lot of resources to recover when something like an earthquake comes along and destroys their homes or destroys their

cars or shops or sort of whatever other resources they have. Well, Ben, you're starting to do what I would like to do now, which is to turn to what this earthquake has looked like in Syria, which, as you've said, has been in the middle of this deadly civil war. So before we turn to that larger context in Syria, let's first understand what the damage has looked like from these two earthquakes in the country so far. So I think the difference between Turkey and Syria, Turkey has a functional state. It's a place that knows that they're at a tremendous earthquake risk. The government has put in lots of regulations about how buildings are supposed to be built to protect against these things. And that doesn't mean they're always followed, but the regulations

are there and there is a state to enforce them. These areas in Syria are exactly the opposite. These are places that are very poorly governed. Some of them are under control of the government of Bashar al-Assad, which has become very, very weak over the years through this decade of civil war that they've been fighting. And the fact that much of the world considers him a pariah and doesn't want to do anything to help out his government. Other parts of this territory are run by anti-government rebels who sort of do their best to govern in these areas with very, very few resources. You also have close to 3 million people from elsewhere in Syria who have fled fighting, who have ended up in this area, people who probably thought that they were going to be able to get out of Syria, go to Turkey, perhaps get to Europe, and just basically got stuck. So this is an area that is incredibly poor,

has very poor governance, and it's safe to say that they don't think a lot about building codes. Lots of these people live in sort of very hastily built, you know, either shelters, sometimes unfinished apartment buildings, sometimes poorly built apartment buildings. And so they were just much, much more vulnerable to something like an earthquake when it came through this area. So what does the recovery look like for both of these countries, Ben? Because as you're hinting at, these are two very different places with two very different governments that have two very different relationships with the rest of the world, including countries like the U.S.

On one hand, it's been quite remarkable to see how many countries have stepped forward and offered aid, offered to send in their own trained rescue crews to come sort of join the operation. But almost all of these offers have been made to Turkey. There have been very few that I've seen of people actually sort of offering aid to Syria and to its recovery for this. Part of that is just because of the respective governments involved. Most governments in the world have quite a good relationship with Turkey. It's a member of NATO. Whereas Syria has just become a very complicated place. People don't like Bashar al-Assad for the most part. Most people consider him a war criminal and don't really want to help him after the way

that he's waged this civil war in his country. And then the other parts of this territory that are run by the rebels, people have kind of a hard time with them too. There have been problems with jihadist organizations working around their areas. And so funders are very nervous about putting any funding in. And all this is just going to make it that much harder for, you know, the normal people who have ended up in these areas and just happen to be living in this situation to get the kind of aid that they'll need to recover from this. So through no fault of their own, the people in the parts of Syria that need the most help are quite likely not to get it or get it very quickly because of the war. Yes, I think that's true. And I think it's probably going to

be much harder for the people in Syria who, in many ways, have the least resources to bounce back from something like this. So Ben, I'm curious, as someone who has spent a fair amount of time in both of these countries, how you're thinking about this natural disaster and the way fate brought it to these two countries? First, there's just a tremendous amount of sadness. I mean, these are parts of the world that have plenty of struggles of their own. But to get hit by something like this, it's sort of a fate that you wouldn't want to wish on any society. I mean, this is an earthquake of biblical scale that you sort of read about in the Old Testament. It's been very difficult to watch. I mean, these are areas that I've traveled in very frequently,

where I've done a lot of interviews through the course of the war and the various responses to the war. And this is just another blow to a place that's really dealt with a lot. And you just hope that there's a way that they can pull out of it, or that there can be some kind of real recovery. that they can pull out of it or that there can be some kind of a real recovery. Well, Ben, thank you very much. We appreciate it. Thank you. On Monday night, I reached a man named Freddy Marash who was in his home in the Syrian city of Aleppo when the earthquakes began.

We live in a city where electricity is scarce. So it was pitch dark, no power, no lights. Our building, luckily, was built in a good way, so there was no destruction. But the building opposite us is a hospital. It's a maternity hospital. And the whole top of the hospital, the roof, like a small wall, all that came down on the street. And there were cars parked there, so it crushed all the cars.

And I walked around, and it was the same case with many buildings. Like, if you want, three blocks away, there was this building which was completely destroyed. People lived in there and died. Some people I know died. Night. Freddy, what's it like experiencing this earthquake for you? I mean, you live in Aleppo, which has been in a state of war for quite a long time. I mean, how do you understand this earthquake in that context? You know, when you live in a war-torn city like Aleppo, you get used to everything in the end.

I mean, I've seen people being killed by snipers. I've seen buildings being blown up by missiles, by terrorists. So when you see all that, I mean, okay, an earthquake is, if you want, it's an act of nature or an act of God, if you want. So, I mean, you just have to deal with it. What can you do? Tomorrow, life will go on. Yeah.

Tomorrow, we're going to wake up, go to work, and life goes on. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. On Monday, a top American commander said that the military had failed to detect previous Chinese spy balloons that had entered U.S. airspace before last week, an intelligence failure that he said must be fixed. The admission from the leader of the North American Aerospace Command, Glenn Van Hurk, highlights America's vulnerability to Chinese incursions, which have occurred at least five times in recent years.

And Russian forces attacked dozens of Ukrainian positions across the war's eastern front on Monday in what Ukrainian officials said could be the start of the largest Russian offensive since the war's earliest days. Russia appears determined to break through Ukraine's defensive lines before the one-year anniversary of its invasion on February 24th, and according to Ukrainian officials, has dispatched tens of thousands of soldiers to eastern Ukraine in an attempt to accomplish that goal. Today's episode was produced by Rachel Quester, Carlos Prieto, Mu Zaydi, Diana Nguyen, and Claire Tennesketter.

It was edited by Lisa Chow and MJ Davis-Lynn, contains original music by Marion Lozano and Dan Powell, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landvork of Winderly. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landvork of Winderly. Special thanks to Robert Wirth and Abdelaziz Ajini. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.