Metric of misery: Turkey & Syria, one week on. Ukraine, nearly one year in

Photo by Syed Ali on Unsplash

One week on from the earthquakes that have devastated large swathes of Turkey and Syria. Nearly one year from Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.

The world is grieving and helpless, feeling the weight of individual stories of suffering and loss. As author Orhan Pamuk has written (paywall), one is “filled with a sense of guilt and responsibility…The sense of helplessness is crushing”.

The stories are mostly coming in from Turkey, not because it suffers more, but because there is more access for journalists, aid agencies and international rescue teams. Southeastern Turkey is less contested territory than northwest Syria, which is a patchwork of areas controlled by different entities — the bulk is held by the Syrian government of Bashar Al-Assad and the rest is divided up between Turkish-backed Syrian rebels, the Kurdish-led forces and jihadist forces. So, there is a troubling lack of specificity in reports from northwest Syria. All we know, as of February…