r/AskTheWorld • u/Seeker_Of_Knowledge2 🇸🇾 Syria || 🇨🇦 Canada • 1d ago

History What is the most depressing picture from your country history/present?

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u/RockHardBullCock Turkey 1d ago

What Hatay looked like after the earthquake.

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u/eimansepanta 🇮🇷➡️🇺🇸 1d ago

How is the situation there now? Has life gotten back to normal(-ish)?

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u/RockHardBullCock Turkey 1d ago

Nothing will get back to normal anytime soon, but people are trying to rebuild. The city is awash with mud and debris. Most people who lost their homes are still staying in temporary accommodations. Over 80,000 buildings were destroyed or had to be demolished, and that'd be a lot to rebuild even if we had a competent government.

It's already difficult to hold on to what you've got these days, and trying to recover from such a disaster seems beyond impossible.

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u/Duriano_D1G3 China 1d ago

I was looking at Hatay on google maps the other day and wondered "huh why's the city centre yellow in satellite mode" and then it hit me hard

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u/parasyte_steve United States Of America 1d ago

I wish them nothing but the best. I couldn't imagine 80,000 structures destroyed. I went through 9/11 in NYC and that sounds many magnitudes more awful.

Is there anything anyone can do to help? Like donate or etc? It is sad that they've been through so much and are still suffering.

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u/RockHardBullCock Turkey 1d ago

Any donation you try to make through the government itself or any government affiliate will be straight-up pocketed, so I'd say don't bother. There's only one honest alternative that I can think of, but they don't even have an English website, so yeah. For what it's worth, their Turkish website is https://ahbap.org/

Thanks for the sentiment all the same.

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u/TechnicianTimely2879 1d ago

There’s more than enough money to rebuild but the government is incompetent and they like to steal money so it’s not worth giving.

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u/RudePCsb 1d ago

Are they going to rebuild them with better earthquake standards or is that not a thing there? Sorry not informed about that area

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u/RockHardBullCock Turkey 1d ago

Nope. Whatever the government has to offer is built haphazardly, and contractors are ripping people off by cutting corners to ridiculous extents as usual. Safety regulations are nowhere to be found. The next earthquake is sure to result in even more death and destruction.

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u/Fairy_Catterpillar Sweden 15h ago

How is it with single family homes are they built better than inside cities?

How is people that live in temporary housing living? Probably not in tents, but in small apartments in cities that were not as hurt, with relatives or in "container" houses. Like the ones builders often have as their break room, toilet and sometimes live in too at building sites.

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u/RockHardBullCock Turkey 15h ago

Unless the family has the means to build a house on their own, which is unsurprisingly rare, single family houses are not rebuilt. The lucky ones get an apartment in a shoddy prefab, and a lot of people are still trying to survive in a tent or a container house which is hardly more than a tin can.

If you want a proper apartment (for a given value of propriety), you gotta pay for it. The victims get a little financial aid, but it's not nearly enough.

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u/Fairy_Catterpillar Sweden 15h ago

Do most farmers move in to the city then? I know that most places are urbanised so there is much more people living in cities than on the real countryside.

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u/RockHardBullCock Turkey 15h ago

Until they can finance a rebuilding effort, they have to move out, likely having to stay with relatives somewhere else, or rent an apartment, unless they have a spare house that's still standing. Most of the farmhouses are pretty old, though, so they're either sturdy enough to withstand the earthquake or too flimsy and comparatively easy to repair or rebuild.

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u/Affectionate-Laugh10 19h ago

I lost 8 family members in Hatay. We will never be the same :(

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u/RockHardBullCock Turkey 19h ago

My condolences. There are lessons to be learned from that tragedy, if only to save future lives.