Search and rescue efforts continue in an apartment destroyed in the earthquake that occurred on the morning of February 6, 2023 in Adana, Turkey. Search and rescue operations are being carried out in the wreckage of buildings destroyed in Adana`s central Cukurova district due to the 7.7 magnitude earthquake, the epicenter of which is Pazarcik district of Kahramanmaras and affecting 10 provinces (Photo 268590123 © Tolgaildun | Dreamstime.com)

By Alessia Proietti

"Our hands are tied"

Red Deerians share stories of family facing earthquakes in Syria and Turkiye

Feb 9, 2023 | 10:05 AM

Ezgi Sarioglu lied in bed on Sunday when they felt a sudden urge to check their phone. To their surprise, they saw numerous concerning messages from people they haven’t connected with in over a decade. ‘Is your family safe?’, ‘I know you are from Gaziantep, Turkiye’.

“My heart stopped for a second in that moment. I got up and I immediately called my brother but I was starting to shake; I was really afraid. After hearing from him that they are safe, I felt a little relieved but it took even a while to calm myself down. Because the aftershocks are continuing, you can never quite feel safe for them,” said Sarioglu.

On Monday, February 6, Turkiye and Syria were hit by a 7.8 magnitude earthquake on the Richter scale in the early morning, followed by another later on at a 7.5 magnitude. According to the Associated Press, the current death toll has passed 19,000 and counting.

Sarioglu, who works at Red Deer’s CARE for Newcomers organization, says Turkiye continues to feel aftershocks, watching their family’s bookcase shaking in the background on an internet video call. They say 20 family members and five cats are staying at their father’s two-storey house as it is deemed more stable than an apartment building. Other locals are staying in their cars or at mosques, they say.

Sarioglu says the Gaziantep Castle that withstood several wars and earthquakes for over 2,000 years, couldn’t withstand the current natural disaster and has been destroyed. Other cities lost power from broken pipelines, leaving homes without heat or the ability to cook, which is being exacerbated due to the region facing a colder than normal weather forecast below freezing.

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They say highways and airports have been destroyed in cities like Hatay making rescue efforts difficult.

“I have a friend who lives there and his friend was under the rubble and he says they literally kept listening to the voices calling for help slowly fade away,” said Sarioglu.

Across the border, Shirin Jawish says some of her family members, spread across northern Syria, were left homeless on the snowy day.

“Words cannot express the ache in our hearts; I feel so much pain. I always pray to God to protect,” she said. “We are human; we are brothers and sisters.”

She said this referencing a viral video of a baby being born under the rubble in the town of Afrin, the same town where Jawish is from.

Specifically from Sinko-Afrin near the city of Aleppo, Jawish also works today at CARE for Newcomers, and says her heart falls for her family and friends as she feels her “hands are tied”, watching the devastation from Canada.

She says five members of her uncle’s wife’s family have passed away in the earthquakes.

With family also in Turkiye, Jawish is part of the Kurdish ethnic group, which has been under conflict with the county for generations while Syria has also been in a civil war since 2011.

Photos taken by Ezgi Sarioglu’s aunt and uncle in Gaziantep, Turkiye of a destroyed building from the earthquakes. (Supplied)

“I really hope for everybody, but specifically for Kurdish people, they struggled a lot for thousands of years because we don’t have rights. I hope someday they can be safe and their voice can be reached to the whole world,” she said.

“It was already suffering; for living, for everything. Now, this is something extra. I don’t know how behind they will be; in education, for everything. How much they will be impacted, how many years they will need to come to normal.”

Ola Zeinalabein, from the Syrian capital city of Damascus, believes nearby countries should start advocating to the Syrian government to pause the conflicts and open borders for the sake of families suffering from the quakes.

“The Government of Syria is just keeping them in there like, ‘here you go, if you’re going to die, you die. That’s it, we don’t care’. Social media is not getting the whole picture of what’s going on with the war,” she said.

“I was talking to one of my friends and she said to me ‘we have been in a war for 12 years now and we never experienced this terrifying moment ever, even when we were chemically bombed over our heads’.”

Zeinalabein, who also works for Red Deer’s CARE for Newcomers, says that while her family’s home wasn’t destroyed, they still felt the earthquake in the southeast, requiring her aunt to temporarily relocate to a nearby shelter. She says some of her friends who had previously relocated to Turkiye as Syrian refugees are now left homeless once again.

She says she hopes people can practice humility by empathizing with those suffering and do what they can to spread the word or either donate to national and international fundraisers.

While Turkiye declared a national week of mourning, Sarioglu says one of the hardest parts about being far away from family is having to mourn alone.

Destroyed building in Gaziantep, Turkiye taken from Ezgi Sarioglu’s aunt and uncle. (Supplied)

They and Jawish have created a GoFundMe page to help the small towns and cities of Turkiye and Syria. Sarioglu says the countries have already been through enough crises in their conflicts, economies and healthcare systems, with some smaller cities not having a hospital to care for injured patients from the earthquakes.

Sarioglu says they hope, “for the earthquakes to stop so that people can return to their homes and feel safe and start healing and rebuilding because they’re continuously being traumatized right now. They told me today that when they hear a door opening they jump thinking it’s an earthquake because it’s so frequent.”

According to Catholic Social Services in Red Deer, there are no local fundraising initiatives yet. They say roughly 400 Syrians and a very small number of Turkish newcomers currently live in Red Deer.