Has big tech given a cold shoulder to fundraising for Turkey and Syria’s earthquake tragedy?

The recent calamity that devastated thousands of lives across Turkey and Syria once again points at the hypocrisy of big tech when it comes to Muslim-majority countries

In a country that sits on the Anatolian Plate bordering two major fault lines, earthquakes are unfortunately expected in Turkey. One of the strongest earthquakes to have hit the country since 1939, the earthquake last week was at a magnitude of 7.8 on the Richter scale and its devastating effects, with several aftershocks, were felt across Syria, Lebanon and Israel. 

At the time of publishing this story, the earthquake has left more than 20,000 people dead and over 300,000 displaced. In Turkey, more than 6,000 active residential buildings have so far collapsed into rubble, leaving behind a bloody trail of corpses. Endless people have taken shelter wherever their feet could take them—dormitories, public lavatories, hotels and even cemeteries. The merciless pelting of the rain and snow isn’t making matters any easier, either. Amidst all the suffering, the privileged among us might have a single question: What can we do to help?

A case of singling out? 

When it comes to tragedies striking the Middle East, it turns out, there will never be a single link online that can take you to credible resources. No stickers from Instagram, and no clarion call that urges us all to change our profile pictures to the respective flags of these countries. The tragedies in Syria “provoked no reactions in the West remotely comparable to the solidarity shown with Ukraine," Michael Young, a senior editor at the Carnegie Middle East Center, wrote last year on the think tank's website, at the peak of the Russia-Ukraine war. 

What’s happening, or has happened in Ukraine, is something no country should have to go through in today’s world: Hospitals being bombed, perfectly functional families with a roof over their heads suddenly turning homeless overnight, scores of youth grappling with machine guns and fielding missiles. However, the singling out of the suffering of largely Muslim-majority nations, particularly by big tech, is hard to overlook. If the parameter for the bombing of such countries is not wanting to interfere with politics, then what explains the apathy of the big tech with the non-political earthquake of Turkey? 

According to Khaled Beydoun, a law professor at Wayne State University in Michigan, there is a clear bias of big tech when it comes to mobilising resources and help for the tragedies of western counties—from the fire at the Notre Dam in 2019 to the Russia-Ukraine war to the spate of mass shootings across America. 

“At the heart of it, this is a result of Eurocentrism, the fear of being associated in any form with the Middle East,” he tells The Established. “During the Russia-Ukraine war, Instagram created a special sticker for Ukraine. If you used the sticker in your Stories [on Instagram], it would amplify them across millions of phones globally. There is no such help for Turkey right now. Such a seemingly small gesture alone can save thousands of lives by directing aid in the right place.”

Misplaced notions

Beydoun says that for those with bigoted views, even a tragedy of this scale does little to thaw their hearts. For Turkey, when Beydoun shared links of verified organisations working on the ground in the country, many Twitter users refused to donate, under the assumption that they would be used to “fund terrorists” instead, simply because it was a Muslim-majority country involved.

“All we want is for there to be a consistent principle of help from the big tech that can be applied across the board, regardless of race, ethnicity and geography,” he says. “Unfortunately, corporations are pretty averse to associate with the Middle East unless it’s very lucrative.”

The fact that corporations and high-net worth individuals from the West only associate with just a sliver of the Middle East was evident in the massive opening of the hotel, Atlantis The Royal in Dubai last month, that even had Beyoncé performing live for a private concert of a 1,500-seater audience after five years. It is, thus, no surprise that there were commentators and established academics who had gone on record at the start of the Russia-Ukraine war to “explain” that what made the conflict so shocking was that it was happening in “civilized” Europe, not in (by implication, “uncivilized”) Iraq or Afghanistan, where fighting had “raged for decades.”

At the end of the day, it seems the worth of human life continues to be measured by their faith, their ethnicity and the colour of their skin. We see similar  discrimination being played out with the rankings released by the Henley Passport Index, and a harsher one when even historically tragic earthquakes won’t move big tech and, by extension, the “civilised” West. 

Opening image: Image: Instagram.com/fotinitsiridou

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