The earthquake of two Mondays ago knocked down thousands of buildings, trapping tens of thousands of Turks and Syrians who were mostly asleep. While the rescuers listen for signs of life and explore access routes, already against the clock, the mandates also probe the political cracks opened by the catastrophe. Armenia and Greece turn to the arch-enemy Turkey, on the one hand, and the Arab countries seek reconciliation with Syria.
This catastrophe diplomacy could be of particular benefit to Bashar al-Assad, eager for the quake to crack Syria’s limbo. This week, for the first time in a dozen years, a Saudi Arabian plane – loaded with aid – landed in the country. Also for the first time in the same period of time, a Jordanian foreign minister went to Damascus to meet with the reviled Syrian president. Shortly before, his counterpart from the United Arab Emirates had done it – for the second time this year -, who then continued on his journey to Washington.
Abu Dhabi is, in fact, leading the thaw of America’s Arab allies with the Syrian regime. He has offered Damascus a hundred million dollars – a quarter of what the UN requested – and sent several planes. Others, such as Algeria, are now asking outright for their reintegration into the Arab League.
Assad, meanwhile, agreed on Tuesday that UN aid could enter the area of ??Syria he does not control through two additional border crossings. Until now, only one, Bal al Hawa, whose road was damaged, remained open. On the other side, in the northern half of Idlib province and in residual parts of Aleppo province, simmers the Syria that lost the war, with its Sunni extremists, its jihadist militias in the wake of al Qaeda and its women involved in home or otherwise covered from head to toe.
All this punctuated by a dozen Turkish army forts, on a sea of ??hundreds of thousands of displaced people, with their occasional portraits in the car of Saddam Hussein, “Sunni hero”. Not forgetting his international cronies, often with powerful PR departments.
Bashar al-Assad, no less autocratic than the other “Arab brothers” who previously sent him armed rivals and today send him help, set foot this week in Aleppo, which he took a few years earlier with blood and fire, with Russian air aid. Dozens of buildings have not endured, because they were already touched.
This Thursday, in his first televised message after the earthquake, the heir to Hafez el Asad admitted the seriousness of the situation: “The scale of the disaster far exceeds the available resources.” The Syrian president also hinted that the disaster offered “an opportunity” to deal with various “accumulating problems.” Without ceasing to renew his call for the United States and Europe to lift sanctions against his police regime, a historical ally of Moscow.
These have been lifted by Washington, for three months, for transactions related to humanitarian assistance. Something that has not eliminated the misgivings of many governments, banks and private organizations. In any case, even in “rebel” Syria these days it was admitted that the current limbo has made rescue operations difficult. The fragmentation and prostration of Syria, prolonged by the interest of third parties and by El Asad’s own disinterest in seeking a political solution, have cost lives.
Likewise, the aid received by Syria has arrived later and in less quantity and quality than that provided by many more donors to Turkey. In any case, 59 planes with food and humanitarian aid have landed in Damascus, 49 in Aleppo and 42 in Latakia, an Alawite stronghold also badly affected.
Emirates has practically established an airlift. In the background, friendly countries such as Russia, Iran, Iraq, Algeria, Egypt, Armenia, India, Bangladesh and Venezuela have sent between one and six planes. Also Japan and, as a European exception, Italy, which has sent its aid to Damascus by road, after landing it in Beirut.
On the other hand, thousands of Syrians have returned to Syria this week, in the absence of a safe haven in Turkey. Since last week, at least another 1,500 have done so feet first, to be buried. The paradox is that while at least 6,000 people have died in Syria from the earthquake, many more Syrians have died in Turkey.
Syrian refugees – who do not actually enjoy such status in Turkey – have been promised by Ankara that they will be able to return within three months. Many might not. In Turkey, the “us first” wins integers, in the heat of trauma and the scarcity of resources. The Syrians are accused of being behind the looting.
The UN estimates the total death toll from the quake across Syria at about 6,000. A higher figure than the official one, of 1,414 in the government zone and 2,274 in the Islamist zone, where the White Helmets have acted as civil protection and media arm, as when the war -now larvada- fell on the heads of the extremists Sunnis and the civilians around them.
Before this telluric shock, approximation movements had already been registered. Abu Dhabi reopened its embassy in Damascus as early as 2018. Earlier this year, the Syrian and Turkish intelligence chiefs met in Moscow, paving the way for a meeting of the respective foreign ministers and, eventually, a face-to-face between Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Bashar el Assad. Since 2011, staunch enemies, despite having spent the holidays together, as a family, a few years before.
The quake could also have put to rest, perhaps forever, Erdogan’s threats to embark the Turkish Armed Forces on a fourth ground intervention in northern Syria. The elections, except for subsequent postponements of difficult legal justification, must be held between May and June. The head of the opposition, Kemal Kiliçdaroglu – who belongs to the Alevi minority – has already said that if he wins, his priority will be to negotiate peace with Bashar al-Assad, an unavoidable step for the return of Syrians to their country. However, within his National Alliance there are some more belligerent voices, along the lines of Washington and Brussels.
The magnitude of the earthquake has allowed the Armenian Foreign Minister to make an exceptional official visit to Turkey, after dispatching a rescue team to the devastated area. The border between the two countries has been opened for the first time since the last major earthquake that, decades ago, mainly affected Armenia.
The diplomacy of the catastrophe has turned into good words and good deeds the traditional belligerence between Greece and Turkey, accentuated in this pre-electoral period in both republics. Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis spoke Thursday night on television “of the opportunity that is opening up to redefine relations with Turkey.” His Foreign Minister did not hesitate to travel to the devastated Antioquia.
In cities like Aleppo, patients even crowd hospital corridors and resist being discharged because they have nowhere to go. This city experienced a cholera outbreak last year and the Red Cross has already warned of the danger of spreading epidemics if the removal and recovery of bodies in Syrian cities is not accelerated.
Especially in Aleppo, where “entire neighborhoods have been abandoned”, although the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees considers the figure of “5.3 million homeless Syrians” if no action is taken. Another priority is the restoration of running water and electricity, in a country weakened by so many years of civil war, which is piling up pending reconstructions.
“Ambulances have difficulties finding gasoline and also our cars,” explained the Red Cross envoy.
Others have been surprised by misfortune far from home. Seven Syrians, members of a family that had managed to escape unscathed from the earthquake in Nurdagi -one of the hardest-hit cities- died last morning when the house that served as a refuge in Konya, in the center of the city, caught fire because of a brazier. from Turkey. It is a married couple and five children, from 4 to 13 years old.
