“You can’t run away”
Earthquake rips left chairpersons out of their sleep
By Robin Grützmacher
2/6/2023 at 9:17 p.m
As a sign of solidarity in the trial against politicians from the pro-Kurdish HDP, Janine Wissler travels to Turkey and visits Diyarbakir shortly before the verdict is announced. Then earthquakes hit the city in the southeast hard – and the member of the Bundestag is right in the middle.
The leader of the Left Party, Janine Wissler, experienced the worst earthquake in Turkey since 1939. At 4:17 a.m. she was woken up in her hotel in Diyarbarkir, the member of the Bundestag reported in an interview with ntv.de. “Everything was shaking and creaking. It quickly became clear to me that it was an earthquake. It took forever and felt blatant. You can’t run away.” From the window she saw how the lampshades were moving in the house next door. The politician initially stayed in her room. “I was thinking, what am I going to do now? I don’t know my way around the city and didn’t know where the nearest open space was.”
Later, “an unbelievable number of people” were on the streets. According to Wissler, some of them cried. An HDP MP then went with her to a destroyed apartment building, where the residents tried to clear away the rubble with their bare hands. In the affected areas, the wintry weather is currently making the situation even more catastrophic: “It’s incredibly cold, the temperatures are freezing,” says Wissler. The local people now need “urgently, urgently” humanitarian aid, including from abroad.
“Every minute counts”
A few hours after the first severe earthquake with a magnitude of 7.8, Wissler made his way to the airport to travel to Ankara. Not because of the precarious situation – the flight had been planned anyway. The politician was therefore no longer aware of the violent aftershock at noon with a magnitude of 7.5. The situation at the airport was relatively normal. “It took a little while for me to realize the whole thing,” she said to ntv.de in the evening from the Turkish capital.
When asked if Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan could take advantage of the situation, Wissler replied: “It’s hard to say, I don’t want to speculate. There were supposed warnings about the earthquake. Did the government react adequately? Did they mine In my opinion, not done. Now the question is, how quickly will the help come?” The earthquake hit a region that was already underfunded. Early presidential and parliamentary elections are due in Turkey in May.
The 41-year-old had actually traveled to Turkey as an observer for the expected verdict in the Kobane trial against politicians from the pro-Kurdish opposition party HDP. “I thought I’d go to Diyarbakir first,” said the politician. There they have, among other things the wife and parents of former HDP leader Selahattin Demirtas, who has been imprisoned for six years. According to Wissler, the pro-Kurdish party set up crisis coordination from Ankara. Buses would therefore drive to the affected regions to help people in the freezing cold. “Every minute counts in the search for victims in the rubble.” It is unclear whether the trial will take place on Tuesday as planned. Wissler wants to stay in Turkey until Wednesday.
The death toll from the severe earthquakes in Turkey and Syria has now risen to over 3,000. At least 1,762 people died in Turkey, according to the Turkish civil protection agency AFAD. More than 12,000 people were injured. Thousands of buildings collapsed in the tremors in south-east Turkey alone. Videos from several cities in the area showed partially completely destroyed streets.