Turkey x Syria

February 6, 2023, Multiple earthquakes strike Southern Turkey and NW Syria

This is heartbreaking to write. This is a confusing time.

Recent earthquakes in Southern Turkey and NW Syria have directly impacted communities that we have have been collaborating with since 2016. In places like Gaziantep and Kilis, our Syrian heroes of #MeWeSyria have been cultivating community-led spaces of healing, community-building, and creative expression for over 7 years.

Southern Turkey, its people, its food, its trees, its parks, are a gift to the world. Today, Gaziantep is in ruins as the epicenter of a horrific natural disaster.

In an effort to bring out the voices, perspectives, and needs of our Syrian and Turkish friends at this tragic and vulnerable time, we are releasing raw and unpolished reflections and dispatches as host Mohsin tries to account for his friends and volunteer teams in Turkey/Syria. Mohsin narrates and shares text messages and images with friends and colleagues who are actively surviving and trying to process this natural disaster in Southern Turkey.

The audio diaries attempt to reflect on the gravity of what this uncertainty and displacement means for a community already enduring over 10 years of uncertainty from man-made disaster of war, discrimination, and forced displacement. How are people coping? How does one begin to pick up the pieces?

The intention here is to archive community-led voices and to not lose energy and focus on the people of Turkey in this time of need, and in particular, it’s to not lose attention and energy on the Syrian community who remain the most vulnerable and forgotten over this last decade of war and discrimination.

Please DONATE what you can to the following organizations committed to delivering supplies and medical aid: Save the Children, CARE, SAMS

February 6 | ‘It’s Happening now…’

Listen to the February 6 episode here: The ground won’t stop moving; People sleep on the street or in cars; Togetherness is strength