Turkey earthquake: Twitter plea for help gets 17,000 responses

Journalist Erhan Çelik asks his Twitter followers to offer accommodation to those made homeless by the earthquake

guardian.co.uk, Constanze Letsch in Istanbul and Peter Walker, Monday 24 October 2011 

Turkish people sit on a street in Ercis after the 7.2 magnitude earthquake
on Sunday. Photograph: Mustafa Ozer/AFP/Getty Images

As with the previous deadly earthquakes in Turkey, within hours of the 7.2 magnitude tremor which destroyed dozens of buildings in the east of the country on Sunday came complaints that not enough was being done to help the victims. This time, however, the anguished onlookers could do more about it – through social media.

At the heart of these efforts was Erhan Çelik, a journalist for Turkey's Kanal 7 TV station. Around five hours after the quake struck in Van province, as it become clear that many thousands of people had been made homeless, he suggested – in an idea initially devised by another journalist, Ahmet Tezcan – to his 22,000Twitter followers that those willing to offer accommodation to quake victims could send him an email. He used #ÊvimEvindirVan – or my home is your home, Van – as a Twitter hashtag, the searchable label which helps topics spread through the site.

About seven hours later he tweeted: "There are 17,000 mails in my inbox. I'll send them all to the Istanbul governorate. I thank you all in the name of earthquake victims."

Soon afterwards came the message that authorities in Istanbul would now take offers of accommodation directly and these should no longer be emailed to him. There is now a 24-hour hotline for such offers to be made.

Offers also came directly via Twitter. "I am a policeman in Istanbul. We can house one family," one read. Another said: "My house is small but I can sleep in my daughter's room for a while. I am waiting for a family of two or three people."

If this wasn't enough, Çelik also used Twitter to help persuade three mobile phone companies, Turkcell, Avea and Vodafone, to grant people in the quake-stricken region free texts and talktime, after some complained they were unable to contact loved ones they feared were trapped.

Awak from Çelik's one-man efforts, Facebook also played a role, with users sharing emergency phone numbers and starting pages giving instructions on where to deliver aid, some of which was being delivered free of a charge by freight companies.

There was, however, an inevitable darker side to all this. Van province has a majority Kurdish population and is a centre of activity for the banned pro-independence Kurdish Workers' party, or PKK.

One Turkish TV host prompted protests by asking why Kurds who sometimes battled the police should expect help from them, while Çelik said he had received abusive replies after tweeting condolences in Kurdish as well as Turkish.

He tweeted later: "It is very sad that the tweet i posted in the early morning caused discontent. While one side shows such fantastic solidarity, the racists are on the other." He later repeated the joint-language message of condolence.