This is going to be a short "thank you" message to the 84 countries’ rescue teams because it is not only very difficult to talk with a huge lump in your throat, but also to write about it with misty eyes.

Some 102 countries helped us to regain our resilience. In psychology books, experts teach parents to encourage kids to find their inner strength by helping others. The important thing is to realize that you are a human and sometimes you fall. But you have to get up and head forward one step at a time. All those truckloads, airplane-full of aid materials reminded us to act with bravery and to stand up once again.

In Turkish, we have a saying: "Kara gün dostu" (a foul-weather friend). In our personal lives, a friend is a person who we like a lot, share the good and bad, even though he or she is not a part of our family. Your family is there for you all the time. Thank God for that. But some of our friends, even those we consider good friends, are there to share only the happy moments of our lives. Some friendships might need to be tested to see if they last even in difficult times.

You know we all must have written a 100-word composition homework, on the saying that "a friend in need is a friend indeed." We all must have tried to explain that it describes the most important characteristic of a true friend who helps a friend in times of need. We must have tried to explain why such a friend is a precious asset in our lives.

In Türkiye, unfortunately, the very-well known fact that we are living on a land that is prone to earthquakes does not seem to be internalized enough in our culture. I don’t want to give the impression that we do not have adequate laws and regulations to build earthquake-resistant buildings. Yes, we do. The young republic learned its lesson 84 years ago.

The 1939 Erzincan earthquake struck eastern Türkiye on Dec. 27 with a magnitude of 7.8 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of XII (Extreme). Some 33,000 were dead and 100,000 were injured, propelling the government to come up with decree laws and regulations about building codes. With every major tremor and thousands of victims, the country’s building regulations improved. Finally, we ended up with control mechanisms, audit systems and authorities to superintendent those systems. Independent of the licensing authorities and subject to government supervision, those superintendence regulations are up to par with those in Japan. The only difference is that people in Japan simply hold tight to their chairs when a 7.8 tremor shakes their towns, while we had to dig them up from beneath the mountains of rubble.

In short, every strong earthquake does not turn into a national disaster. For Türkiye, it is different because we haven't established the fact that ours is also an earthquake-prone country.

Only a fortnight ago, we were enjoying ourselves as citizens of a rather rich and considerably respected country in the region. What is too difficult to accept is the fact that, despite all the reformations, modernizations and improvements of building codes, a tremor that is not causing a major disaster in, let's say, Japan, still creates havoc in Türkiye. Yes, it was a "strange" tectonic movement. Yes, two major earthquakes took place in a nine-hour time span (a first in the known database of geology), and yes, Turkish people and their friends were able to raise $7 billion (TL131.81 billion) in a massive fundraising campaign for quake survivors in a very short time.

Even so, every earthquake should not turn into a catastrophic disaster. It is feared that the death toll might be doubled after the rescue operations are completed. Almost 1 million families are now homeless. In order to provide housing for them, universities continue with their remote learning programs, which, in my humble opinion, cannot replace the benefits of face-to-face teaching methods.

The government’s idea of utilizing the campus dormitories seems to be the best palliative care to the urgent need for one million homes for those who lost their buildings in 11 provinces which have been known for their harsh winter conditions. Transferring those families, after burling pieces of their hearts in those devastated hometowns into temporary housing facilities, is another cumbersome and sometimes unmanageable task.

The difficult part is over

But I am sure all those projects are going to be handled and completed in a fashion. The difficult part is over now. Our friends, true friends from 74 countries around the globe rushed to our help. They dug through the rubble, moved mountains of debris, literally digging holes with needles and rescued over 11,000 people.

Although we don't have the final death count, the Disaster and Emergency Management Agency (AFAD) said 253,000 searches and rescue personnel worked in the field, 7,098 of them from our friends indeed. They changed the fates of thousands of people and their families. They changed the known parameters of disaster medicine which suggested it was practically impossible to survive under rubble after 72 hours. However, those 7,000 aid angels pulled mothers, sons, daughters and fathers even 13 days after the disaster. We refer to it as the "296th-hour miracle" for what they did, but for them, it was "one more life to be saved."

I have witnessed, reported and read about tens of earthquakes in Türkiye. I see something is different about it this time around: The people want to put an end to that vicious circle. They don’t want to live with the idea that earthquakes beget human disasters. Earthquakes happen, but buildings should not be necessarily destroyed. We should immediately start implementing those modern building codes and regulations and inspect our buildings, like those nations that do not collapse with every convulsion of the earth.

Again, thank you friends for empowering us to get back on our feet. We won’t forget the generous hand you extended.