The earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria at 4am on Monday is already among the deadliest of our young century. The death toll hit 7,700 on Wednesday morning and is expected to rise dramatically, as the time window for finding survivors in the rubble gets narrower by the minute. In southern Turkey alone, some 6,000 buildings have been levelled, leaving hundreds of thousands homeless. All in all, some 23million people across Turkey and Syria are said to have been impacted by the earthquake and its aftershocks. The humanitarian crisis that is unfolding is bleak beyond words. The obvious question it invites is, could things have been different?
