What is a state? Who is the state? What does this state do? We saw and learned again in the most painful and most furious state. The state became a freak as the Palace Regime is dissolving. Today, this is the state, it dissolves, and it governs only in this way. It is the one who does not do search and rescue after earthquakes, does not remove debris, does not try to heal wounds, does not do anything so that its people will die. This is the state. The state is the one who can say, with an angry face, and only after 33 hours when the most critical hours after the earthquake is said to be the first 72, that “We have declared a state of emergency,” and the one who with an angry face and almost as an enemy that they noted down those who died and those who tried to help.
Was there a need for a declaration of a state of emergency? Was a state of normalcy in order in this country? We know every state of them. While there are at least 300,000 people under the rubble, the enemy gaze has no power over anyone.
They say, “We have declared a state of emergency,” as if they needed a state of emergency to become the enemy of the people. This is an attempt to intimidate, with the hopes that it works. Aside from before, was there a “normal” situation since the Gezi Resistance? They are trying to intimidate by declaring a state of emergency as if no one has been detained for their social media posts, journalists have not been arrested for making news, states officials have not been appointed to replace elected municipalities; as if deputies, doctors, lawyers, students, academics and revolutionaries have not been imprisoned. We know their state of emergency and continue to do what we do.
Search and rescue teams, collection of aid boxes, solidarity tents, disaster coordination are carried out with volunteers. This is our reality. We are millions whose hearts beat together, we are the ones who mobilize to organize solidarity out of privation.
The destruction is huge. Our loss is huge. The pain is too great. The anger is too great.
We, the rest of us, who will heal the wounds in all this wreckage, will re-establish this life. In order to not allow them to leave us under the wreckage again like this, this time we must build this life, with our own hands. For this, we must transform the power we mobilize from today into continuity.
- The people in the earthquake area and the volunteers who set out from the first day established a disaster coordination center in order to organize search and rescue activities and to meet the daily needs of life. These centers created an opportunity out of nothingness and made an infirmary for first aid, toilets, and areas for the care of the elderly and disabled; they started the work of setting up tents for kindergarten and shelter. These centers should multiply and become widespread.
- No one is condemned to starvation when food stores are full. Generators standing in stores; foods and medicines in markets, warehouses; construction machinery and vehicles should be taken under control of and used by the coordination centers established by the revolutionaries and volunteers in order to meet the basic vital needs of the people.
- We must make the solidarity that we have established today for the earthquake zone permanent and more organized in every province. The way to do this is not to be content with providing supplies, but to receive more coordinated news from the region and to organize according to the needs of the region.
- The way to do this is, just as we participate in the removal of the wreckage today, to organize the work of providing shelter, health and education tomorrow; and take part in a long-term solidarity.
We are the ones who die while building these buildings, and we are the ones who die while living in them. We are the ones who make the cranes and work machines that do not arrive to the earthquake zone, and we are the ones who can use them. We are the ones who make the boxes for solidarity, we are the ones who make what is inside of the boxes, the blankets, the generators. We are not condemned to say “Where is this state”, we can build a new life with our hands.
Only we can save each other.
