Nature does not forget, nature does not forgive and nature never lies. Only human beings lie, sometimes with words, sometimes with the veil of ranting that science covers it with.
The slurry in Altınözü, which we have seen in the attached images, and the earthquake dwellings in Samandağ, which are facing a similar disaster, are not just a “torrential downpour” or an “unfortunate landslide”. It is a testament to the fact that merit is buried in the ground, engineering is silent in the face of rent and not a single lesson has been learned from the experience of ten thousand years of settlement culture.
AREN'T YOU ASHAMED OF THE LEGACY OF TYTUS?
Exactly two thousand years ago, the Roman Emperors Titus and Vespasianus built one of the largest tunnels in the world to protect the harbor in Samandağ from the flood waters coming from the mountains and the mud brought by landslides, right next to the TOKİ constructions you are building today. Those mountains, dug with the blood and sweat of thousands of prisoners, were shouting something to us: “This is a moving land, water cannot be interrupted, the character of the land cannot be tampered with!”
Where was the mind that deciphered the language of the soil and took the pulse of the climate with the technology of two thousand years ago; where were those who set out with huge budgets and “TOKİ confidence” in Turkey in 2026? Even ten thousand years ago, when a settlement was being established, the flow of water and the shifting of the soil were monitored. On the basis of which scientific observations and geological studies did you attempt to build “new cities” in those landslide zones and on the unstable ground of Altınözü?
IT IS CERTAIN THAT THE TENDERS ARE NOT GIVEN TO SCIENCE: BUT TO WHOM?
We have to ask:
- Did you feel the need to research the climate regime, the soil structure and the millennia-old memory of the region while opening these areas for development in Altınözü and Samandağ?
- Did you wait for a winter to test those hillsides with water before erecting those huge blocks?
- How did you award these tenders to these engineers, companies and planners who built new cities in the 2020s without doing a single research on the region?
BUILDING A CITY IS NOT PILING UP CONCRETE
Building outdated houses that will be buried under mud and slide into the earth in the first rain on top of the lives destroyed by the earthquake is a mockery of the suffering of this people. This shortsightedness, hidden behind the slogans of “rapid housing”, opens the door to other disasters tomorrow. You cannot build a city in a place where you do not know its nature, rainfall, soil condition and most importantly its historical reality; you can only build tragedy.
I appeal to those responsible: Why are your consciences not shaken while the foundations of those buildings are shaken? While the tunnel built two thousand years ago is still standing, why are your modern housing estates falling to the ground in their first winter?