İZMİR - Interpreting the fact that the state did not help the cities where the Kurdish, Alevi and Arab people lived in the earthquake as a conscious demographic change, Author Hüseyin Ozan said: "The earthquake turned into an 'opportunity' for the policies implemented for a century as a state policy."

 

The destruction experienced in 11 cities following the Maraş-centered earthquakes and the lack of aid to the cities for days caused the death of tens of thousands of people and injured hundreds of thousands. Although a month has passed since the earthquake, problems still continue in the earthquake zones, and millions of people either stay in makeshift tents or are forced to migrate to other cities due to the housing problem.

 

While this situation is evaluated as a conscious policy by the peoples of the region, the demographic structure of the earthquake zones also justifies these evaluations. In addition to Maraş, the epicenter of the earthquake, Adıyaman and Gaziantep, which suffered heavy destruction, are the cities of Kurds and Alevis, while Hatay is an Arab-Alevi city as well as a settlement where dissident citizens live. The massacre and assimilation policies that have been going on in these regions since the past make it possible to turn the earthquake into an “opportunity”. The indifference of the government after the earthquake, the massacre of Kurdish Alevis in Maraş in 1978, is a continuation of the attacks against Alevis and other minorities in Adıyaman and Malatya.

 

MONIST STATE

 

We talked with Researcher Writer Hüseyin Ozan about the danger of changing the demographic structures of cities, which started after the earthquake. Stating that Anatolian and Mesopotamian geographies have hosted countless peoples for millennia, Ozan said: "A monotype fascist mentality has empowered itself in these lands. This idea is not the opinion of either the Turkish people or the people living in these lands. This was an ideological imposition imposed by a clique of domination and their imperialist masters on these lands. It is doubtful that after these earthquakes there was no intervention in the region, no help was given to the region, and there is a large concentration of Alevis and Kurds in this region."

 

THE POLICY OF GOVERNMENT 

 

Stating that demography changing is a very serious danger, Ozan said: "We have evaluated it many times before. Similar things have happened in the Varto and Erzincan earthquakes. For example, a serious population has been settled in the Kurdish Alevi villages of Erzincan from the Black Sea. In the burning process of 94 villages, Kurdish people were already there. Millions of people have been displaced from their regions. The policy of demographic change has been applied systematically for a very long time. Unfortunately, when we think of it as humanitarian and conscientious, we can not think about it. But they are doing this. They are making this change by using all their means."