International solidarity. Rescuers are working hard to try to find the last survivors, five days after the double earthquake that killed more than 23,000 people. Several children were brought out alive from the rubble this Friday in Turkey and Syria, leading the Damascus regime to accept the sending of international aid to the areas held by the rebels from the regions it controls. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights called on the same day for “an immediate ceasefire” in Syria to facilitate support for the affected populations there.
“We don’t care about governments”
Because access to Syria at war, whose regime is under international sanctions, is proving complicated. In Turkey too, recurring tensions between Athens and Ankara first raised questions, but not among the volunteers mobilized. In the old city of Antioch, Greek rescuers try to save a couple caught in the rubble. Socrates, a Greek volunteer, is marked by the scale of the destruction. “We knew it was a disaster, but when you see it with your own eyes, you really understand what happened here”, he confides at the microphone of Europe 1.
When we evoke with him the serious diplomatic tensions, Socrates sweeps the subject of a wave of the hand. “We don’t care about governments, what’s important are the people,” he replies, at the same time providing moving support for the bereaved Turks.
“Humanity is still there”
Asle, who translates for the Greek rescuers, is very touched by the arrival of international aid. “I couldn’t stop crying. Everyone comes to help. Governments may not be doing much, but humanity is still there,” she says, moved.
A parenthesis in the stormy relations between the two neighbors, reminiscent of that of 1999, after the great earthquake of Yalova. As if, in adversity, Turks and Greeks remembered that they can behave as brothers and not as enemies.