The destroyed city, the image that Ossip Zadkine made for the bombed-out Rotterdam, found a musical counterpart on Wednesday evening in the song that Karsu Dönmez sang for the destroyed cities and villages in Turkey and Syria. She sang in Turkish, but her wordless slur at the end will have been understood by everyone.
Karsu’s scream in the live program of the public and commercial broadcasters together must have given many Dutch people a push to donate money to Giro555 for the victims of the earthquakes of February 6. The position at the start of the broadcast was almost 55 million euros, the final position at half past ten was 88.9 million.
As a rule, natural disasters generate more money than wars, said action coordinator Kees Zevenbergen of Giro555 at the previous fundraising campaign for a disaster that was a war. The invasion of Ukraine, one year ago. A blameless disaster makes giving easier, he said, explaining why “only” five million was donated to the fundraising campaign for the war in Syria in 2013.
The comparison with a war was made a number of times at the table of presenters Jeroen Pauw and Eva Jinek. Sinan Can had been in the affected area for his series a year ago Sinan in search of Paradise. Last week he returned and thought he was in Aleppo. Everything broken and collapsed.
In a war, said the current 555 director Michiel Servaes, the disaster unfolds gradually. District by district, village by village, city by city. But in Turkey and Syria, an area the size of the Netherlands and Belgium together has suddenly become uninhabitable. A war, Karsu said, goes step by step. She lost sixteen family members in a week’s time in the earthquake. In Turkey, 35,000 dead have now been recovered, with the Syrian victims the number rises to 41,000.
Fidan Ekiz, former Turkey correspondent, sat at the table, a paper handkerchief in her right hand to be on the safe side. Through her we got a glimpse into her aunt’s home, who survived the 1999 earthquake in Turkey, but her daughter did not. Olcay Gulsen, program maker, had just returned from the disaster area and said she wondered what she was doing while there. And now that she’s here, she’s asking herself that again.
Cagri Karar was in Turkey selling his family home when the earthquake started. There is nothing left of the house there and now that he is back in the Netherlands, he says, he is ashamed to lie down in his warm bed or take a shower. Survivors GuiltOlcay Gulsen had already mentioned it.
Peshmerga from Syria, who has lived in the Netherlands for eleven years, can no longer sleep in his own bed, he says. He has just become a father, his daughter is ten weeks old. “But my sofa is warm and I still have a roof over my head.” He knows he’s not helping anyone, not even himself.
But he does help to create understanding among the Dutch viewer for his country, which has been at war for twelve years, was bombed to pieces and now this. “There was an energy crisis in the Netherlands. Everyone was panicking.” But in Syria, he says, an “everything crisis” has been an “a to z crisis” for 12 years. War refugees living there in tents are now sheltering the earthquake refugees.
There was music by Jaap Reesema with a Syrian singer, Willeke Alberti sang with the Turkish Dutchman Ammar Bozoglu. Before her performance, Karsu sat at the table to talk about how her family in the disaster area was doing. Images were shown of how the village of Karsu is now and she asked: “Is that my village?” Eva Jinek feared so. Not surprising that Karsu’s song ended in a scream.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of February 17, 2023