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ACM: Turkish-Syrian earthquake, please donate [1]

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Date: 2023-02-12  

For some reason beyond her ability to comprehend, NY Brit Expat thought she was writing next weekend, rather than this Sunday as such she has not prepared anything to write.

It has been a very busy week and somehow in the midst of the catastrophes facing so many people on this planet, she has messed up. I have been spending the week watching the disastrous earthquake in the countries of Turkey and Syria and have spent quite a while trying to avoid giving a donation to the leaders of both countries and have searched for a charity to ensure that all the people of Turkey and Syria will get the support bypassing the respective governments. Already over 33,000 people have died in both countries and estimates are saying that it may be over 50,000. The delay in getting search and rescue people on the ground given a strong and shallow earthquake and aftershock means that many people who may have survived the initial quake and aftershocks have now died. I also wanted to avoid religious organisations as again the situation in both countries is complicated to say the least.

The political situation is horrible in both countries. Moreover, Syria is run by Assad who quite honestly is a butcher of a dictator and has been in a Civil War for year, even worse, the earthquake has hit the opposition held area in Syria, thereby making assistance harder to get into these regions as everything initially had to be routed through Damascus (in addition, the main route connecting Syria and Turkey had been hit as well) and other routes also had to be opened which required negotiations.

In Turkey, there are many different groups of people and religions and the earthquake has hit areas where the dominant groups are Arabs, Kurds, Alevi (religious group) and Turks and many of those people do not support Erdoğan who runs the Turkish government. While I understand that Turkish journalists have to not mention certain groups of people, what has been disturbing me was that the reporting in Britain seemed really constrained or self-censored in that while they mentioned that the areas hit was one that voted for the main opposition party, they never said the name of the party (CHP a Kemalist Social Democratic Party, or the HDP which had strong support among Kurds and the left but which was banned by Erdoğan and his cronies; which opposition party?); they never mentioned that Hatay which was destroyed was ethnically Arab, that Kurdish towns had been impacted and they only mentioned treated Arabs as Syrian refugees; yes, some of them are, but also many are Turkish citizens. As more and more people die waiting for assistance, the delay in getting search and rescue assistance on the ground has been blamed on political issues which is nightmarish as the situation required quick search and rescue operations.

I know that people don’t have much these days due to economic crises, recessions and a cost of living crisis, but if you have a bit extra, please donate:

To donate to the Heyva Sor (Red Moon) of Kurdistan click here:

To donate to the Syrian White Helmets, click here

Try to find an organisation or charity that has feet on the ground as they know how to help, like DayMer in Britain (I am sure there are similar organisations in the US which are multicultural and on the left.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/12/2035097/-ACM-Open-Mic-Night-with-some-discussion-on-the-Turkish-Syrian-earthquake

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