Quake-stricken refugees in Turkey lament delay in aid deliveries to Syria

Ahmed*, a Syrian student who has lived in Kilis for 12 years, has slept terribly since the earthquakes. His eyes are reddened as he walks around the gymnasium of Kilis University, which has been transformed into a reception centre for victims of the quakes.

“I’m scared,” he says. “Scared of dying. I can hardly breathe. The earthquake destroyed our house in a minute and a half.”

Ahmed trembles continuously. The earthquake and its aftershocks traumatised him so badly that he is unable to calm down. “I keep staring at the walls,” he says. “We are surviving here. We don’t want to die. But we are better off than here than elsewhere.”

Some 2,500 people, many of them Syrian refugees, are inside this heated gymnasium, including many children. Some sleep, while others chat in the stands.

Since the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011, 3.6 million people have fled from Syria to Turkey, according to the UNHCR. These refugees are often still traumatised by bombs and gunfire and haunted by a feeling of precariousness. The earthquake has reopened barely healed wounds.

Double trauma

A tourism worker living in Alanya, far away on central Turkey’s Mediterranean coast, Alladin has lived in Turkey for nine years. He was passing though Kilis to get some paperwork sorted out when the quakes struck. “I was stuck, so I came here to sleep in the first hours after the earthquake,” he says, sitting in the gymnasium stands. “We’re very comfortable here. It’s warm; we have a roof over our heads. For now, we’re safe. There’s food; there’s everything we need. They are taking care of us.”  

The sports hall suddenly comes alive at around 1:30pm. A small group of people arrive wearing red uniforms – meaning it is time for lunch, provided by the Turkish Red Crescent. Tables are set up at the end of the room. Two queues quickly form, with women and children on one side and men on the other.

“Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières, or MSF) has been funding three hot meals a day in this place for the past three days,” says Anne-Cécile Niard, the French NGO’s logistics co-ordinator for Syria. “We serve 6,000 people every day, although we know we’re unable to help everyone. Between 9,000 and 10,000 people are outside. They aren’t necessarily staying in the shelters set up by the authorities. Some people are sleeping in their cars, but they still come here for a hot meal.”

MSF is assessing what kind of aid is most desperately needed in Turkey. “Sometimes there are enough tents but not enough blankets,” Niard says. “People have taken what they could from their homes, but often that doesn’t amount to much.”

Rummaging through his plastic bag, 50-year-old Alladin says he is alone, as his wife and three children are in Damascus. “I miss them so much; it’s been nine years since I’ve seen them,” he says, his voice full of emotion. “I talk to them via WhatsApp when the internet is working. Things are more complicated over there than they are here.”

“I want to address a message to the whole world,” Alladin says. “We have to get aid to Syria. Here in Turkey, it’s relatively easy to find help. But over there, it’s impossible. It’s very hard.”

Chaos in Syria

Indeed, it is chaos on the Syrian side of the border. Search and rescue teams sometimes have had to dig survivors and victims out with their bare hands due to a severe lack of equipment. These shortages have meant that hundreds of people who could have been saved were not. Others had to wait for hours to be rescued.

Syria’s hospitals are overwhelmed and people are trying to survive on the streets in the freezing cold without blankets or food. The earthquakes have so far claimed more than 5,800 lives in Syria, according to a Reuters tally. Most of the victims live in rebel areas hostile to President Bashar al-Assad. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNCHR) has estimated that the earthquake may have left more than 5.3 million people in Syria without shelter.

Assad has agreed to open two new crossing points from Turkey into the Syria’s rebel-held northwest to deliver aid and equipment, the UN announced late on Monday.

But so far the Syrian people – already ravaged by a decade of brutal conflict – have been unable to receive all the aid they desperately need.

MSF, which was already operating in Syria before the quakes hit, is providing medical equipment to some 30 hospitals and healthcare facilities in various Syrian cities. Medical personnel including surgeons have been dispatched to treat the wounded; tents have been set up for the surgeons to do their jobs. Some 20 medical centres have been opened in and around the camps in Syria’s northwestern Idlib region. Blankets, plastic sheeting, hygiene equipment and cooking supplies have been distributed.

Meanwhile, MSF has been supporting other NGOs on the ground in Turkey such as the International Blue Cross (IBC). “Our goal is to help people by providing healthcare and all the other basic necessities – blankets, food, hygiene kits,” says Hakim Khaldi, MSF’s head of operations in Syria.

While the most pressing priority is to treat quake survivors in hospital, MSF workers also highlight how important it is to keep the aid flowing so people can be treated for their injuries over the medium-to-long term. “We’ll need supplies to carry on treating their injuries after they’ve gotten home from hospital, especially when it comes to bone fractures,” Khaldi says.

A dream of Paris

Ahmed, meanwhile, chain-smokes as he dreams of moving to the French capital and enjoying a pain au chocolat accompanied by a latte. He mentions the Netflix series “Emily in Paris” with a smile on his face.

But Ahmed’s smile does not last long. “The bombs going off in Syria … and now this. People are dying en masse,” he says. But for all his visions of a new life in Paris, Ahmed says he knows he is unable to leave Turkey. “How would it be possible?” he says. “Syrians here aren’t allowed to work. And, in any case, I can’t leave my mum and my siblings here.”  

Indeed, Turkish authorities have issued a mere 200,000 work permits since 2016, allowing only a minority of Syrian refugees to legally work in the country.

Nerves are understandably fraying among the quake-stricken Syrian refugees taking shelter in this sports centre. There is just too much pain: the trauma of the earthquakes on top of the trauma of war. “Many live in apartment buildings and those on the upper floors don’t want to go home at all,” Niard says. “Adults as well as children are traumatised. They don’t want to go home at night; they’d rather sleep outside.”

The earthquake has left behind a mental health emergency in addition to the physical injuries. In devastated southeastern Turkish cities and towns like Gaziantep, Nurdagi and Islahiye, “we were told that we need authorisation from the Gaziantep regional health centre before bringing in mental health resources”, says MSF’s Khaldi.

Ultimately, time is the most precious resource in this field of ruins. It will take a lot of time to heal Syrian refugees who have suffered from the trauma of war and exile, followed by this natural disaster. The Turkish authorities simply “won’t be able to house these people in tents for months”, as they may well need to do, Niard says. So many apartment blocks are now “cracked and risking collapse, [and] need to be destroyed”.

“They’ll have to knock them down and rebuild them – and that’ll take months, years even. Many people will leave the region to join their families elsewhere in Turkey,” Niard continues. “As for the others, I expect that the Turkish state will have to put them in hotels or similar accommodation for the long term. It’s going to be very complicated, but the country has already experienced major earthquakes. Unfortunately, the authorities are used to them.”

* This name has been changed.

This article was translated from the original in French.