Türkiye

Overview

On 6th February 2023, two earthquakes struck southern Türkiye and northwest Syria which have had devastating consequences. The damage to buildings and key infrastructure have left millions displaced, and resulted in widespread disruptions to supply and services.

The scale of the destruction means that the response to the earthquakes in Türkiye will be long and complex. The challenging conditions on the ground have also been exacerbated initially by harsh winter conditions, and then flash-flooding in the Adıyaman and Şanlıurfa in March 2023. Attention is also needed to vulnerable groups such as refugees, women, children, elderly persons, and persons with disabilities who typically face compounded challenges in crises of this kind. 

It is a response in which national and local actors have been at the forefront of the response from the outset, and as the international architecture expands its footprint, an understanding of evolving need, restrictions on inclusion, and dynamics between communities, local and national actors and international responders is essential to inform the ongoing response.

Our work

Funded by the H2H Network’s H2H Fund, which is supported by UK aid - from the British people, in 2023 we launched a project to perform two primary purposes:

• to conduct qualitative research to inform the response with the views of affected people and local aid workers, and

• to embed perception work in the response processes from an early stage, sensitive actors to the importance of perception work, and to design a long-term mixed-methods perceptions tracking approach.

An independent process of listening to and amplifying the voices of communities is vital if the response is to have the impact it needs to in the face of overwhelming and diverse needs. We will therefore seek to uncover, throughout the course of the project, the extent to which the humanitarian response in Türkiye is accountable to people’s needs, priorities, and expectations, how aid can be more responsive to the unfolding needs of the affected population in Türkiye, and how international actors can effectively support and engage with the localised response. This project will therefore engage with themes of aid relevance, participation, fairness, access to information, empowerment, and localisation.

We will facilitate ongoing dialogue sessions with community representatives and local actors throughout the research process, to ensure that we can produce recommendations for improvement that are locally owned and sustainable.