[Editor's note]: In February 2023, major earthquakes in Turkey and Syria attracted worldwide attention. In the latest episode of the "No Bry" podcast, freelance photographer LiYanan attempts to paint a true picture of what Turkish and Syrian cities really look like by sharing some of his past stories and experiences in the area.
I want to tell the heart of the Middle East with my own deeds. In June 2022, I went on a road trip to eastern Turkey that happened to pass through many important cities in the heart of the earthquake. The first city I settled in Istanbul was Gaziantep. The city is located in a special location, located on the border between the Anatolian plateau in western Turkey and the Kurdish region in the east. I rented a car from the city and started my road trip in eastern Turkey. The trip is divided into two main parts, the first of which is along the borders of Turkey and Syria, as well as Iraq. I chose this route for two reasons: First, the Kurdistan region in northern Iraq is a relatively independent and developed region. The local security is also relatively stable, and even many Westerners choose to go hiking there. Second, because it has excellent natural scenery; But separating a border and heading west into Syria is a completely different picture.
At opposite ends of the border, very different lives
The northern part of Syria is the most fragmented part of the country, entrenched in various armed forces, coupled with some political intervention by Turkey, which makes the situation very complicated. The map of a country may not be a unified whole. To give a simple example, if I get a visa for the Syrian government army, I still can't go to northern Syria, because there are many areas, there are Kurdish armed forces, armed areas of the Free Syrian Army, and further west there are various small armed factions. As the areas where different armed forces are entrenched, the so-called territory is constantly changing, including its regional rivalry with government forces in the south. At a certain time, the northern area will form a relatively stable state, allowing people from outside to enter it.
After leaving Gaziantep, I went to the border between Turkey and Syria, where the security was very strong. The border enclaves, separated by long distances, house important military installations. The day I arrived at the border, the wind was particularly strong, and huge amounts of dust were blown up in the desert on the Syrian-Turkish border, resulting in poor visibility. The only thing I knew was that there was an artificially built barbed wire and concrete wall in front of me, which separated Turkey behind me from Syria in front of me. We have the impression that Syria is raging and fragmented, and full of armed forces. Turkey, on the other hand, is a peaceful agricultural area, with some small villages where everyone lives comfortably. The two worlds, separated by artificial facilities, are in completely different situations.
On the subsequent trip, I also tried to stick to the border line and go east to the Euphrates River. Despite more than 7,000 years of changes, the Tigris and Euphrates rivers still flow. After a short stay by the river, I headed for Wolfa. I had a good impression of Wolfa: before entering Wolfa, you need to cross a bridge across the Euphrates River, and after crossing the bridge, you enter the old city of Wolpha built on the hill, which is a scattered city full of small houses and full of lights from a distance, which is very dreamy. Although after entering the ancient city, I found that these starlights are local dilapidated houses built on a small hillside, but when they form a whole, they give a great visual impression.
Sadly, the city was badly damaged in the earthquake. Many houses in the area have reportedly collapsed, killing countless lives. The image that always came to my mind was me parking by the Euphrates River to photograph the patchwork Old Town with two children playing soccer. Returning to the reality of the moment, those houses may have collapsed in the earthquake, and the two children who played football did not know if they were still safe. I have the impression that the city is intact, and the tragic images in the news reports at this moment make it difficult to connect the two directly.
Looking back at the Euphrates River I passed, I saw that it amounted to a demarcation in Syria. The situation west of the Euphrates River is very chaotic. Turkey's border has a narrow anti-"L" shaped strip that envelops the area north of Aleppo up to the Turkish border, and many different armed forces occupy these small strongholds. Idlib, west of Aleppo, has always been an important stronghold for rebels; Antakia, the part west of Idlib where Turkey meets the Mediterranean, was also badly damaged in the earthquake. These areas west of the Euphrates River were controlled by various armed forces. Many news reports say that Idlib currently receives zero international aid and can only rely on self-help, because the area is fragmented and difficult for any international aid agency to access. In the face of such a major natural disaster, the place is controlled by different factions and different armed forces, resulting in international aid being unable to enter it. In contrast, all international aid can go directly to Turkey itself. At opposite ends of the border, the situation is very different.
On the rest of my trip, I walked south along Wolfa to the border. After entering the border, I saw the small city of Akchakkale, which is also a border crossing. The Syrian city opposite it has a tongue-in-cheek name: Taylor Abyed. At this crossing, I saw the Turkish flag and the Syrian rebel flag flying opposite. It dawned on me that the Syria across from me was not the Syria that everyone knew it to be, but it was a narrow strip wrapped in Kurdish Syria. Every time I see such a scene, I feel that it is really extremely exhausting to understand the various political factions, the various armed dispersion forces, and how it has undergone dynamic evolution.
All pictures in this article were taken by Li Yanan, the author of this article
An abandoned Syrian refugee camp in Tudong
Abandoned refugee camps
After leaving this crossing, I passed Jay Lampenar on my way east along the border. There is a huge white area near the city, which is a refugee camp in Syria. I was very curious and wondered if I could go inside. As soon as I got off the bus, I felt the heat and wind, the sun was so hot that I couldn't stand up, and the strong reflection of the white tents made me dizzy walking in the uninhabited refugee camp. I saw a lot of tents left by families. Because I've been to Syrian refugee camps in Lebanon before, I know the structure of those tents: there is a simple shoe changing place when you come in; Behind a curtain separated by a curtain is their living room, where all the family's life is completed. Some of the living rooms were carpeted, and you could feel that they were walking in a hurry. In contrast, refugees in Lebanon are more of a "free-range" state, allowing for more contact with the state and sometimes simple jobs. But refugees in Turkey and Jordan are unable to work and are only available internationally. I know why the camp was established and where the people came from, but I don't know where they are going, leaving me with only the huge, abandoned refugee camp in front of me.
As of 2023, the Syrian civil war has been going on for 12 years. While much of the region now appears to be moving towards peace, we cannot say that Syria has completely emerged from the war. During the 12-year civil war, Syria has produced 6.8 million refugees, many of whom have gone to surrounding countries. So far, Europe has not been able to resolve the Syrian refugee crisis, and neighboring countries, led by Turkey and Lebanon, have received large numbers of refugees. But the Turkish population now has a lot of emotions about refugees, and they don't want to accept refugees anymore or let Syrian refugees live in their own countries. In reality, Syrian refugees in Turkey cannot have contact with society, so Turkey has successively driven many refugees back to their hometowns; Or drive them away without finding a place to settle them, and the abandoned Syrian refugee camps in front of them are born.
Sometimes, some international aid organizations have an international way of operating, but they create different obstacles when facing different countries and taking over different groups of people. Turkey is a very clear example, the United Nations Refugee Agency and other agencies are actively involved in resettling Syrian refugees, but these Syrian refugees are after all present on Turkish territory, and the Turkish government has the right to intervene in the lives of these refugees. Ultimately, the result of this intervention was the removal of all these Syrian refugees. Therefore, we cannot understand these sufferings through some one-sided news or news, there is a huge background, complex systems, and there are many subtle changes behind it, and even some real-time changes create the results we see in a moment.
Turkey after the earthquake: fragile cities and unspoken pain
After leaving the Syrian refugee camp, I continued eastward to Nusaibin, a small city in eastern Turkey, for the night. I have been to the Syrian city of Qamishli, opposite Nusaibin, and I have the impression that the buildings in the local residential areas are relatively dilapidated and the infrastructure is relatively rudimentary. In contrast, Nussebin's house architecture is much more elaborate. But what I find most interesting is that in the enclave area between the border between Kamishli and Nusaibin, there is a very small Roman ruin. On one side is the calm eastern part of Turkey, on the other side is the war-torn city, and in the middle it is connected by an ancient Roman ruin, appearing in one space, which is very incredible.
Then I continued east, passing the small city of Gizre, and a little southeast of it would lead to the borders of Turkey, Iraq and Syria. Here, another important river in the basin of the two rivers flows: the Tigris. It flows through a number of large cities in the heart of Iraq, including some sad cities, such as Mosul in the north. Leaving the tri-border and heading east, you will enter the border between Iraq and Turkey. Turkey's encroachment on the borders of Iraq and Syria has kept the border between the two countries blurred.
During this trip, I traveled through several important cities in Turkey during the earthquake. I realized then that the houses there were too dense and fragile. For example, Malatya has many narrow streets and dense buildings. The first floor is mostly storefronts, with only a few thin columns, and the upper floors are very dense residential floors. In my opinion, these buildings are too fragile to provide security at all. In this earthquake, when the load-bearing walls and columns on the first floor collapsed, the entire upper floor collapsed, and the people inside had almost no possibility of escape, causing great casualties. Many cities in the core area of the earthquake, including Gaziantep, were badly damaged. Although Gaziantep's house appears to be of high quality, it was also severely damaged in the earthquake. The presence of such poor quality buildings in such an earthquake-prone region as Turkey can easily lead to a loss of trust in the government.
Another point that struck me was the Zeuma Museum I visited in the centre of Gaziantep, the largest mosaic museum in the world. During the damming of the Euphrates or Tigris rivers, many important Roman and ancient Greek ruins were submerged, and the Zeuma Museum salvaged the relocation of many artifacts of cultural value, the most famous of which is the large area of mosaic paintings. After hearing the news of the earthquake, I felt very helpless and regretful that the Turkish government had saved many historical civilizations, but could not guarantee the safety of the local people. Especially knowing that many people are buried alive under the building, this tragic situation is really sad and helpless.
Aborted reconstruction: How to remember Syria's wounds?
The situation in Syria is more sad than in Turkey. Turkey could allow direct access to international aid teams, while much of Syria was inaccessible, making the earthquake even more vulnerable. At the end of 2018, I travelled to Syria for an important New Year's Eve, the first since Damascus ended its civil war. On the second day of 2019, I left Damascus for Aleppo, Syria's northernmost city.
Aleppo Old City
At the beginning of 2019, part of Syria's most important M5 highway was closed to traffic. The road that connects the road from Aleppo to Hama to Homs to Damascus in the nearest way is an extremely important artery. At that time, the road could only reach Hama, and I had to bypass a small rebel-held area between Hama and Aleppo and go 100 kilometers east, from the east of Arabia into the city of Aleppo. It was also the first time I had traveled to the hinterland of the Levant. Although it is desolate, it is particularly like the flat land of a plateau, and even a bit like the grasslands of East Africa. Because Lebanon, Damascus, and Aleppo are surrounded by large areas of mountainous terrain, the topography of this flat land is beyond my expectations.
Entering Aleppo from the east of the city, driving through the streets of Aleppo's old town, you can see a variety of narrow alleys made up of stone houses, and occasionally people walk through the alleys. The Old City of Aleppo is a preserved medieval old city, its size and architecture are no less than the old city in the center of Jerusalem and Damascus, and it is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site. But it is also the only historic city destroyed by modern warfare, and the entire city has been reduced to war ruins. Everything I saw in the city was ruins, whether it was new buildings or old cities left over from the Middle Ages, all traces of modern warfare, these are the realities of Aleppo.
Not long before the end of the civil war, Aleppo had just ushered in peace, and there had been no extensive post-war repairs or cleanups, and many traces of the war remained. Walking down the street, you can see broken buses and collapsed piles of houses, and artificial barriers used to divide war zones in war are still everywhere. I had free access to every building, and the daily necessities in the room were covered in the wreckage of the war. Because of the war, people's lives came to an abrupt end. Even more heartbreaking, children who have suffered the brunt of war have to continue living in such an environment.
Some of the most significant buildings were also damaged by the war. In the old town of Aleppo there is an important architectural complex, a world cultural heritage: the bazaar of the old city. In early 2019, the Syrian government also began to restore the old bazaar destroyed by the war. Outside the old bazaar is the Umayyad Mosque, which is "miserable" compared to the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus. The massive, collapsed structure may be the upper half of the minaret, which collapsed in the center of Aleppo's Umayyad Mosque Square. Syria is full of these unacceptable facts of space. After watching it for a long time, you may even feel numb.
Holmes war ruins
But the debris that struck me the most was not in Aleppo, but in Homs. Homs is the war ruins of a modern city, with a Middle Eastern-style neighborhood and large areas of residential building remains, which when it stands in front of you, it is completely a monument. After actually witnessing the war ruins of Homs, I felt that the set of any movie could not compare to the impact of the real war ruins. Standing in such a leaning house, you don't know how to walk, you don't know how to get off your feet, and you even worry that it will collapse in the next second, which is irreplaceable by any fictional thing.
Aleppo meant a lot to me, but Holmes had a huge visual impact on me. So I would think that Syria was more devastated by this earthquake than Turkey. Of course, in the face of huge natural disasters, all lives are equal. But because of the political mix, the situation for Syrians will be more difficult, and their access to international assistance will be more limited. Once the golden hour for rescue is missed, the people miss the best chance of rescue. It is really desperate that the Syrian people were once at war and suffered extremely serious natural disasters, and all they could do was save themselves.
I also mention Aleppo and Homs because the crumbling ruins of war, like monuments, may become flat after an earthquake. Those buildings have become loose during the war, and coupled with major natural disasters, it is likely that they will cease to exist. Even some lives struggling to survive in the ruins of war may leave this world as a result. After an earthquake, these "monuments" may collapse with it, and everything will go to zero, as if the war had not happened. Cities in northern Syria, which have managed to recover a little after a long war, have encountered such a huge natural disaster that they cannot even leave a trace.
Sometimes people may think that these things are too far away from me, and there is no real thing at all, but we humans are actually a whole, no matter which side has difficulties, other people will provide help in any way they can. One day, everything will one day be more or less connected to ourselves, and we should not turn a blind eye to the suffering of other peoples.
Finally, I would like to explain the meaning of the title "Syria, Tudong, Flat Land of Sorrow". The flat land may have two meanings, the first is the hinterland of the Levant like the East African steppe, and the heart of Syria is so flat, it visually gives me the feeling of endless and infinite extension. Another layer is the crumbling ruins of war, Turkey's inferior buildings that were razed to the ground in this natural disaster. From a macro perspective, this is a fact at hand; But from a microscopic point of view, these so-called flat lands are a sacrifice that takes many lives. I sincerely hope that such tragedies will not happen again in the future.