The duality of damage (hasar) in a post-earthquake Antioch
In this blog, Erkan Gürsel discusses the continued efforts by the Turkish government to usurp survivors’ lands and assets in Antakya, southern Turkey, following severe damage to buildings and communities in the February 2023 earthquakes. He suggests that under the introduction of Law №6306, the Transformation of Areas at Disaster Risk, the Turkish government engages in a relationship with survivors in Antakya that is systematically extractive and akin to state violence, and that this is among other things embedded into the way that hasar (damage) is designated pertaining to the condition of buildings across the city. Similarly, he identifies how this same discourse can adopt a dualistic meaning to demarcate both the state and survivors’ arenas of power and control, particularly pertaining to Law №6306’s tentative introduction of a reserve area in the urban centres of the city.
As of November 14 2023, nine months after Turkey’s most powerful earthquake since 1939, eight neighbourhoods in Antakya covering a landmass of 200 hectares have been declared as reserve areas under the Law on Transformation of Areas at Disaster Risk. Threatening dispossession for approximately 50,000 residents, the implementation of this practice has been described by the Hatay Bar Association Law Commission as ‘property usurpation’ and is opposed by the vast majority of the city’s population. As the first example of its kind in Turkey, it could serve as a front to “usurp property rights and drive [residents] to the periphery of the city”, argues opposition party CHP’s Deputy MP for Hatay, Nermin Yıldırım Kara. Regular demonstrations have been held for months in neighbourhoods such as Gazi and Çekmece, to which the police response has been disproportionately violent(i).
The magnitude-7.8 earthquake which struck south-eastern Turkey in the province of Kahramanmaraş on February 6, 2023 at approximately 04:17, was followed by a second earthquake approximately eight hours later at 13:24 local time, measuring a magnitude-7.5. According to early preliminary reports shared by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) on February 24(ii), the magnitude-7.8 earthquake was recorded as Turkey and neighbouring Syria’s most powerful earthquake since 1939. Particularly due to the effects of basin amplification(iii), the peak ground acceleration and velocity rates of both earthquakes in Hatay province (located on Turkey’s eastern Mediterranean coast alongside the border with Syria) were substantially much higher than elsewhere.
The poor structural integrity of buildings against the threat of earthquakes particularly in its provincial capital Antakya predict the severity of devastation that followed. Approximately 46.1% of buildings in the region were constructed prior to the earthquake-resistant design code implemented across the country in 2000(iv). Field investigations report that many buildings instead had low concrete quality, inadequate reinforcement, and/or poor detailing. In many cases, even buildings that were constructed well after the 2000 legal amendment did not follow regulations set out to buttress against the threat of earthquake-related damage, as can be seen with the damning controversies of the Rönesans Rezidans in Antakya(v) and the MCG Tower in Iskenderun(vi).
A number of buildings that remained standing were thereafter destroyed by two further earthquakes that struck fourteen days later, measuring a magnitude-6.4 and 5.8 with their epicentres in Antakya, Hatay province(vii). Whilst overall statistics for damage and destruction have been contentious, Hatay’s former provincial mayor Lütfü Savaş reported in the aftermath that approximately 20,000 people in the province had lost their lives, 24,000 people had been injured, and at least 30,000 buildings faced heavy damage and required demolition(viii). According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and their ‘Humanitarian Snapshot on Hatay’ province, 1.1-million people were displaced, 23 hospitals, 179 schools, and 391 public buildings were damaged, and shelter remained one of the most pertinent problems affecting both the remaining and recently returned(ix).
In the immediate period following the earthquakes, the designations of az, orta or ağır hasarlı (little, medium, or heavy damage) became physically embedded onto the surviving walls of many buildings, usually written in red or black ink. These designations were the result of assessments conducted by government officials across Antakya (and elsewhere) on the material condition of affected buildings. Whilst many of these buildings would be deemed unliveable, state-affiliated surveyors favoured categorising them as az hasarlı (little damage), reflecting the government’s resistance to facing accountability for any unregulated, pre-existing conditions. Acknowledging such inconsistencies and the resultant severity of the damage by categorising buildings other than az hasarlı would substantiate claims made by civil society that contractors, property developers, and the subsequent governmental entities tasked with regulating their activities had neglected to implement necessary precautions to ensure the security and safety of residents. According to volunteer engineers surveying damage in the region thereafter, initial assessments were thus carried out under pressure from the Ministry of Environment, Urbanisation and Climate Change to downplay the severity of the destruction(x). By minimising damage, the authorities tasked with adhering to and/or reinforcing housing regulations would render themselves less culpable for the ensuing loss of life and infrastructure. Az hasarlı, or little damage, thus became weaponised by the state as a discourse with which to undermine any calls for responsibility and accountability from civil society in the country.
In the nineteen months since the earthquakes however, hasar has similarly become a marker of local resistance against the state’s usurpation of privately owned land in areas (at risk of) being identified within the reserve area proposed in Law №6306. In testimonies gathered from my own research with residents in the central, historic neighbourhood of Affan, many believe that the state intends to “demolish homes to take [the] land and turn it into a state-owned site for profit. We will then be left with little, if anything”(xi). Such claims have been echoed in more formal chambers including by Kara, who affirms that “Antakya is faced with an administration that wants to exploit the grievances of citizens through the development of the reserve area”(xii). Announced in November 2023 under the Ministry of Environment, Urbanisation and Climate, the reserve area is formally described as a constellation of zones “designated for the purpose of rebuilding and delivering real estate to rightful owners whose homes or workplaces were demolished”(xiii). That withstanding, many survivors doubt the integrity of the state’s intentions, particularly given its ongoing practice of indiscriminately destroying remaining buildings on land demarcated within the reserve’s projected margins. In neighbourhoods such as Gazi and Çekmece for instance, survivors have witnessed the demolition of single-story homes that were virtually unaffected(xiv) by the earthquakes — with many inhabitants of said properties receiving warning about their requirement to evacuate property via text messages. Should such implementation begin systematically, the reserve area is projected to result in the displacement of approximately 50,000 surviving inhabitants(xv) from their homes, many of whom will join the 185,000 individuals currently living in temporary accommodation facilities on the fringes of the city(xvi).
Given the continued, tentative definition of the reserve area’s borders and its core purpose(xvii), as well as the uncertainty of when it is expected to enter into effect(xviii), many residents have thus resorted to using any means possible to resist the potential usurpation of their land. One of these methods is via the discourse of az hasarlı. Just as the state has previously weaponised hasar to absolve itself of any responsibility in the devastating aftermath of the earthquakes, civil society and the survivors they represent — along with lawyers, volunteer engineers, local media platforms, and community organisations — have thereafter utilised az hasarlı to campaign against the forcible assimilation of homes and businesses into the projected reserve area under Law №6306. For residents, the surviving physical integrity of their buildings and the little damage reported by independent assessors negate the validity of the state’s justifications for demaracating a special area in the city and destroying all properties located within it; instead drawing attention to how the reserve area represents an extractive practice of commercial gain through the seizure of surviving properties, the unilateral and court-endorsed decision to demolish them, and their predicted replacement with alleged facilities for accommodation that are built by the state-owned TOKI (Mass Housing Development Administration)(xix) agency.
The state’s acquisition of land for the sake of profit demonstrates a systematic practice of violence by the Turkish government against survivors of the earthquakes in Antakya. Under the guise of redevelopment, the state is able to unilaterally assimilate the assets of residents in areas that they have unilaterally deemed to have a high concentration of destruction, thus utilising disaster as a method to extract and repurpose ownership for further economic gain. Meanwhile, survivors are left in amplified conditions of dispossession and under potential threat of further displacement. As discussed in this text, az hasarlı has been a fundamental component in achieving or undermining this through its discursive weaponization to in subjectively categorising the material conditions of buildings. For the state, az hasarlı has been (initially) used as leverage to undermine its complicity in amplifying the destruction of buildings due to improper guidelines and inspections, absolving itself of any substantial responsibility to ensure the safety of residents both pre- and post-disaster. Survivors, on the other hand, have been compelled to appropriate the discourse of az hasarlı from acting as a weapon of exculpation by the state in the immediate aftermath to becoming an opportunity with which to challenge the state’s usurpation of surviving properties in a long-term context. This duality of meaning in the discursive rammifications of az hasarlı, as well as its interchangeability in usage by various entities in Antakya (that is, the state versus people and the people versus the state), demonstrates to us an ongoing condition of structural violence — and a subsequent resistance to it.
Images are stills from Gürsel’s documentary film, №910, exploring the current conditions that survivors including his own family are faced with in the city of Antakya, southern Turkey.
Erkan Gürsel is currently reading an MPhil in Sociology (of Marginality & Exclusion) at the University of Cambridge. He is similarly an associate staff member at the Department of Geography at UCL, University of London. Hailing from an Indigenous background from this city of Antakya, Gürsel’s work is concerned primarily with the nuanced embodiments of Indigenous identity, the sociology of disaster, state violence, and direct action activism in thecontemporary Republic of Turkey and its margins. At the beginning of 2024, he released a research documentary film titled №910, exploring the impact of the 2023 earthquakes in Turkey & Syria on his paternal family in Antakya. He continues to work as a consultant with the Doria Feminist Fund on their Emergency Response programme in Turkey & Syria.
(ii) http://doi.org/10.32858/temblor.297
(iii) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=536xSZ_XkSs
(iv) https://www.dunya.com/kose-yazisi/10-ildeki-deprem-ulke-ekonomisini-de-vurdu/685263
(v) https://www.diken.com.tr/ronesans-rezidans-cennet-cehennem-dogurdu/
(vii) https://www.euronews.com/2023/02/20/64-magnitude-earthquake-hits-turkish-province-of-hatay
(xi) №910
(xii) In a country hosting the largest population of refugees in the world, I disagree with the practice of asserting citizens’ rights over that of non-citizens.
(xv) Joining the already 180,000 survivors who have been pushed to the peripheries of their city into temporary accommodation — https://www.dw.com/tr/depremin-birinci-y%C4%B1l%C4%B1nda-hatayl%C4%B1lar-unutulduk/a-68157370
(xvi) https://www.dw.com/tr/depremin-birinci-y%C4%B1l%C4%B1nda-hatayl%C4%B1lar-unutulduk/a-68157370
