Searching Optimism: between elections and earthquakes
A big new article on how understanding Türkiye today requires history
A quick update to share a big article some months in the writing, which changed shape to finally cover both the earthquakes in southeastern Türkiye and Syria, but also this weekend's elections that reconstruction efforts now backdrop.
As I wrote at the time, it was hard to believe and awful to think that a few months before the earthquakes, I was cycling through so many cities that were then changed so dramatically and painfully.
This article has been an attempt in writing something solid. It is a past and present of amazing efforts, at both state and community level, to help people in need, often bending or changing rules to do so. It also looks at how that same flexibility, applied at times to regulations, almost certainly worsened the impact on many buildings in the earthquake. It has been emotional to write and I hope that emotion can at least bring insight to others.
The breadth and intensity of democratic contest currently underway feels both historic and positive. It is seldom that voters anywhere have such a clear opportunity to change between two approaches offering such clear distinctions. I actually feel, for all differences, that all of the major parties want what's in the best interests of the country, something which can risk being lost in the heat of election competition.
I give a good deal of credit to NOEMA for their commitment to publish the sort of nuance and cultural context in this article, especially about a country often badly simplified in Western media. I hope it can help give some clearer understanding of what's happening, just as writing and researching it certainly also enhanced my own understanding, and somehow - even after everything - still gave cause for optimism.
Read the full article here:
https://www.noemamag.com/a-search-for-optimism-amid-shifts-across-turkiye/
