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Is there hope for a thaw between Armenia and Turkey after the earthquake? [1]
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Date: 2023-03
“Only the [rescue] dog knows what we have witnessed here,” said a member of the Armenian search and rescue crew working to find survivors in Adiyaman, Turkey, following the 6 February earthquakes that devastated the south-east of the country and north-western Syria.
Twin earthquakes of 7.8 and 7.6 magnitudes caused massive destruction in both countries, especially the cities of Kahramanmaraş, Kilis, Diyarbakır, Adana, Osmaniye, Gaziantep, Şanlıurfa, Adıyaman, Malatya and the province of Hatay in Turkey, and Aleppo, Idlib, Hama and Latakia in Syria. The death toll stands at more than 50,000 people – though is likely to rise – and millions more have been displaced.
In the first few days after the earthquakes, humanitarian support started flooding in, especially to Turkey. More than 30,000 search and rescue workers joined the effort, including teams from 40 countries.
The immediate reaction of Turkey’s neighbours, Greece (to the west) and Armenia (to the east), was noteworthy. Both sent search and rescue teams – despite both having long-standing, complicated and often hostile relations with Turkey. Armenian rescuers in Turkey have said that many locals approached them to thank them and were surprised to learn that help had come from Armenia.
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A translator from Turkey, Burcu Becermen, who has been working on Armenia-Turkey normalisation initiatives over the years, registered to volunteer in earthquake-affected areas. She visited Hatay province in southern Turkey – where a humanitarian coordination centre has been set up – a few months before the earthquake struck.
“Hatay was one of the most multicultural and multi-ethnic parts of Anatolia. It was a very special place. This culture has been seriously damaged, along with synagogues, mosques and so many churches,” Becermen told openDemocracy.
The day after we spoke, Becermen was asked to provide translation services at a Syrian refugee camp in the city of Kahramanmaraş.
According to a 21 February report by local NGO Support to Life, in Turkey the earthquake has affected 13.5 million people (including two million Syrian refugees). In Syria, it has resulted in 8,500 deaths and aggravated the existing humanitarian crisis caused by the decade-long Syrian civil war.
Armenian border reopened – temporarily
Armenian-Turkish relations have been hostile for more than a century because of the massacres committed by the Ottoman Empire against the Armenian population during the First World War, and Turkey’s unwillingness ever since to acknowledge that these constituted a genocide.
From 1921 until 1991, when Armenia was under Soviet rule, only officials could cross between the two countries. The border was closed altogether in 1993, following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The last sanctioned crossing via the Alican-Margara bridge occurred in 1988, when aid was brought from Turkey to the victims of an earthquake in northern Armenia.
The last humanitarian cooperation between the two countries was in 1992, during the First Nagorno-Karabakh War between Armenia and Azerbaijan, when Armenia was on the verge of a humanitarian crisis. Turkey agreed to allow 52,000 tonnes of wheat to pass through the Gyumri-Kars railway to the blockaded country.
Turkey has always supported Azerbaijan in the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh – an ethnically Armenian region of about 120,000 people within Azerbaijan – and even more so during the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War in 2020. Since December, the Lachin corridor connecting Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia and the rest of the world has been blocked by Azerbaijani protesters claiming to be environmental activists. This has sparked a humanitarian crisis in the disputed territory.
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[1] Url:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/earthquake-open-border-crossing-armenia-turkey-greece-syria/
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