Aid after the earthquake

There is still dire need in the earthquake regions – also because Ankara and Damascus are instrumentalising aid

On the night of 6 February 2023, an "earthquake of the century" struck the border region in Syria and Turkey. According to official figures, 130,000 people died under the rubble, although unofficial estimates put the figure much higher. Thousands are still missing today, while millions of people became homeless overnight, losing everything. More than 3 million are still living in container and tent camps.

Willingness to donate and help was enormous at the time – medico's emergency aid also experienced an outpouring of solidarity. This enabled us to provide rapid support to our long-standing partner organisations in northern Syria and south-east Turkey. One year later, we are funding projects that provide long-term support for the victims. This is desperately needed, as aid was also used for political purposes in the entire earthquake region and did not arrive everywhere for a long time.

The failure on the part of the Turkish civil defence system was blatant – in many places, help did not arrive, or it arrived too late. Rescue operations to uncover and save buried victims often failed to materialise. Instead, civil society initiatives were criminalised and relief supplies were confiscated. The involvement of the Turkish state in the machinations of a corrupt construction economy, lack of preventive measures, aid scandals in government-affiliated aid organisations and ignored warnings – all of this cries out for an independent investigation, but there is none. Presidential and parliamentary elections were held in the midst of the earthquake relief programme, which the autocrat Erdogan won despite the state's failures.

In Syria, the earthquake destroyed thousands of homes, claiming at least 8,000 lives and impacting up to 8 million people. People there have been living in a state of permanent humanitarian crisis for years – the earthquake is a new low point in the Syrian disaster. Due to the Turkish border blockade and the instrumentalisation of aid by the dictator Assad, it took days for international aid supplies to reach the largely destroyed north-west, in Idlib and Afrin. To date, no aid at all has arrived in the Kurdish north-east. Millions of internally displaced people live in the north of Syria, the entire territory of which has been ravaged by war, and where the population was already dependent on humanitarian aid before the earthquake. To this day, their supply of needs remains extremely precarious, while UN programmes are being successively cancelled despite mounting needs. Assad was able to use the international aid to present himself as a saviour of those in need. Meanwhile, the war continues: the Syrian regime is bombing Idlib, Islamist rebels are murdering people in Afrin, while Turkish missiles are targeting civilian infrastructure in Rojava, making aid and survival in the camps extremely tenuous.