Frustration, despair and tears have been dominating opposition television channels in Turkey, while pro-government outlets continue to mask the devastation of the public, following two major earthquakes that hit an area that is home to 13,5 million people.
The helplessness in the face of the massive disaster and failing rescue efforts was most visible among earthquake experts that talked on live broadcasts or shared their sentiments on social media.
Naci Görür, a 75-year old earthquake expert with Turkey’s Academy of Sciences, who, almost three years ago, warned authorities of a potential high magnitude quake that could happen around the epicentre of Monday’s tremors, said on Twitter that he cried for hours after receiving the news.
“Friends, I am very sorry, but there was an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.5 in the Pazarcık region of Maraş. A very big earthquake, I hope our casualties will be low. As geologists, we have got tired of repeating of telling and writing that such an earthquake was approaching. No one even reacted to what we were saying,” he wrote on Twitter.
The professor also kept on warning authorities throughout the day and later joined FOX TV in the evening to evaluate the situation. Görür told that as earthquake experts they had prepared a project years ago for a high-risk area including the Monday earthquakes epicentre Kahramanmaraş, but their project had been declined by Turkish authorities, including the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK).
Görür said the earthquake had come so openly, so vocally that every geologists and geophysicist in Turkey had warned the authorities.
“Despite repeatedly warning authorities since 2022, we have had no response from local administrators in the region. Not a single one of them asked us on what grounds we were making those warnings or what they could do,” Görür said.
Another prominent earthquake expert of the country, Övgün Ahmet Ercan, burst into tears while talking on Halk TV Monday night. The professor said that after the critical first 24 hours that followed the earthquake, only five percent of the remaining survivors under the rubbles could be saved, calling on authorities to use the Turkish military for immediate response and declare a state of emergency.
Ercan was not the only person that could not help crying live on television. Fatih Altaylı, a journalist and a presenter, also was unable to stop his tears, when interviewing the mayor of the southern province of Hatay, who said that those who had survived the earthquake would die of freezing cold if help had not arrived quickly.
Cüneyt Özdemir, another journalist who runs a popular youtube channel, also burst into tears when listening to a woman from Hatay.
“There is no Antakya left,” said the woman, referring to ancient multi-ethnic district of the province. “Thousands are under the rubble,” the woman cried, adding that no state institutions were present. “We are left by ourselves. We are abandoned,” she said.
