A major disaster does not suspend an older person’s need for insulin, oxygen, mobility support or help with personal care. A person with dementia does not become easier to support because a residential building has been evacuated. A wheelchair user still needs accessible transport and shelter. A family caregiver displaced from home may suddenly have to provide complex support without medication records, equipment, electricity or the informal network on which everyday care depended.
These realities make emergency preparedness an integral part of long-term care rather than a separate civil-protection issue. Within the Türkiye Aging, Long-Term Care and Community Support Knowledge Hub, the connection is especially important. Türkiye combines rapid population ageing with substantial exposure to earthquakes and other natural hazards, while long-term support remains distributed across families, health services, social services, municipalities, residential facilities and community provision.
The earthquakes of February 2023 demonstrated the scale at which those systems can be disrupted simultaneously. They also created new long-term needs among survivors living with injuries, disability, bereavement and psychological trauma. Türkiye has since continued strengthening disaster-risk reduction, health preparedness and post-disaster recovery. The Twelfth Development Plan explicitly requires disaster management to recognise the differentiated needs of older people, disabled people, women and children.
The central operational question is therefore no longer whether vulnerability should be recognised. It is how that principle becomes reliable preparedness before an emergency, continuity during disruption and sustained recovery afterwards.
The 2023 earthquakes changed the long-term care context as well as the emergency context
The earthquakes that struck southern Türkiye on 6 February 2023 affected 11 provinces on an extraordinary scale. Tens of thousands of people died, more than 100,000 were injured and millions were displaced or evacuated. Health facilities, housing, transport and other infrastructure were damaged at the same time that demand for emergency assistance increased sharply.
The immediate response understandably centred on rescue, trauma treatment, shelter and essential humanitarian support. Yet the longer-term consequences illustrate why disaster policy and long-term care cannot be separated.
People already living with chronic disease, disability or dependency experienced interruptions to familiar support. Medicines, medical devices and assistive products could be lost beneath damaged buildings. Caregivers and care workers could themselves be injured, displaced or bereaved. People receiving rehabilitation could lose access to services. Hospitals had to manage both new trauma and continuing health needs while parts of the health infrastructure were damaged.
The earthquakes also created new long-term care and rehabilitation needs. Survivors experienced amputations, spinal injuries and other disabling conditions requiring continuing rehabilitation and assistive technology. WHO subsequently supported physiotherapy capacity in primary health-care centres, reflecting the fact that recovery from a major disaster extends far beyond emergency medicine.
This creates an important policy distinction. Emergency response aims to protect life during an immediate event. Long-term care continuity asks how people who already depend on support continue to live safely through that disruption, while recovery planning must accommodate people whose long-term needs have changed because of the disaster.
Türkiye therefore needs resilient community care systems that can absorb shocks without abandoning the ordinary needs that existed before the emergency.
Türkiye has a national disaster architecture, but care continuity has to become operational locally
Türkiye’s disaster-management system is led nationally by the Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency, AFAD. The Türkiye Disaster Response Plan, commonly known as TAMP, establishes an integrated framework involving ministries, public institutions, private organisations, civil-society organisations and other actors. The Disaster Risk Reduction Plan of Türkiye, TARAP, addresses responsibilities before disasters occur, while the Türkiye Post-Disaster Recovery Plan, TASİP, introduced in 2025, provides a framework for structural, social, economic and environmental recovery.
These plans matter because no care provider, municipality or ministry can manage a large-scale disaster independently. However, national architecture does not by itself guarantee continuity for an individual who requires assistance several times a day.
The practical bridge lies between national emergency structures and local knowledge. Provincial and district authorities need to understand which services may be disrupted. Residential facilities need workable emergency plans. Home-based teams need ways to prioritise visits when roads, communications or staffing are affected. Families need information about what to do if normal services become unavailable. Health services need to identify people whose treatment cannot safely be interrupted.
That means emergency preparedness cannot remain only an institutional document. It needs to answer operational questions such as:
- which people depend on time-critical medication, equipment or support;
- how people with limited mobility, cognitive impairment or communication needs will evacuate;
- where essential care records can be accessed if normal premises or systems are unavailable;
- how staffing will be maintained when workers are themselves affected;
- how families will know where someone has been relocated; and
- how temporary accommodation will remain accessible to people with different functional needs.
The answers will differ between a residential care centre in Istanbul, a person receiving home support in Hatay and a disabled adult living with family in a rural district. Preparedness therefore requires national principles but local implementation.
Differentiated need is now explicit within national development policy
Türkiye’s Twelfth Development Plan provides an important policy foundation. Its disaster-management provisions state that the differentiated needs of disabled people, older people, women and children should be taken into consideration. It calls for detailed guidance and training for these groups and their relatives covering what should be done before, during and after different disasters. It also requires assembly and temporary shelter areas to address differentiated needs.
This is more significant than simply identifying groups as vulnerable. It creates an expectation that disaster systems should adapt to functional need.
For an older person with no mobility impairment, the priority may be clear information and access to medication. Someone using a wheelchair may require accessible evacuation transport and suitable sanitation. A person with visual impairment may need information in an accessible format and assistance navigating an unfamiliar environment. Someone with dementia may become distressed or disorientated during evacuation and require continuity of familiar support.
Functional needs also change. A previously independent older person may become temporarily dependent after injury or displacement. A caregiver who normally supports a disabled relative may become unavailable. A power failure can turn a manageable disability into an immediate risk where electrically powered equipment is essential.
This is why disability and functional need provide a stronger planning lens than age or diagnosis alone. Emergency plans need to understand what assistance someone actually requires and how that assistance will continue when ordinary infrastructure is disrupted.
Scenario: evacuating a residential care centre after an earthquake
A residential care and rehabilitation centre in the Marmara Region supports older people with widely different levels of dependency. Some residents walk independently. Others require assistance with transfers, continence, medication or eating. Several have dementia and become distressed by unfamiliar environments.
An earthquake damages part of the building. There is no immediate collapse, but engineers cannot confirm that continued occupation is safe. Evacuation is therefore required.
A generic fire-style evacuation plan would be insufficient. Staff need to know which residents can move independently, who requires two-person assistance, who depends on a wheelchair and which residents are likely to become disorientated. Medication, essential records, identification information and assistive equipment need to move with residents wherever possible.
The receiving location matters as much as the evacuation itself. A temporary space that is physically safe but inaccessible to wheelchairs, lacks appropriate toilets or cannot support people requiring personal care merely transfers risk from one setting to another.
The centre’s continuity arrangements therefore include current dependency information, evacuation support requirements, emergency medication processes, family-contact details, staff responsibilities and agreements about alternative accommodation. Exercises test whether those arrangements work rather than merely confirming that a written plan exists.
After the incident, the provider reviews what happened: how long evacuation took, whether records followed residents, where communication failed and whether staffing assumptions remained realistic.
The lesson is straightforward. continuity planning in long-term support must be built around the people who actually depend on the service, not around an abstract building evacuation.
Residential care needs preparedness beyond structural safety
Building resilience is fundamental in an earthquake-prone country, but long-term care facilities face additional operational dependencies. Residents may rely on medication rounds, food preparation, heating or cooling, lifts, water, communications, medical devices, continence supplies and staff support throughout the day and night.
Failure of one utility can therefore create cascading problems even when the building itself remains usable.
Emergency planning needs to consider how long essential operations can continue without normal electricity, water, digital systems or deliveries. Supplies need to reflect resident dependency rather than a generic emergency inventory. Backup power arrangements should be connected to the equipment that genuinely needs it. Medication continuity needs clear ownership. Staffing contingencies should recognise that employees may be unable to travel or may need to protect their own families.
Türkiye’s updated 2026 regulation governing public nursing homes and nursing-home elderly care and rehabilitation centres reinforces formal responsibilities around the organisation and operation of residential care. Emergency preparedness sits within the broader obligation to provide safe, reliable support, even though national disaster management extends well beyond the residential-care regulatory framework.
Providers examining comparable continuity risks can use the Regulatory Readiness Gap Analyzer to structure consideration of whether policies, operational controls and evidence align with applicable requirements. It is not a Türkiye-specific regulatory instrument and does not replace Turkish legislation or emergency planning requirements.
The broader principle is that preparedness needs to be demonstrable. A plan last reviewed several years ago, containing outdated contacts and assuming unavailable transport, provides little protection simply because it exists.
Home-based care presents a different preparedness problem
People living at home are dispersed rather than concentrated in one facility. Their support may involve relatives, municipal services, home-based social support, Ministry of Health home health services, privately purchased care or combinations of these.
That diversity makes preparedness more complex.
During a major emergency, services may not be able to maintain every routine visit at the normal time. The immediate requirement becomes prioritisation. Someone receiving help with domestic tasks may be able to tolerate a temporary interruption. Someone requiring assistance with medication, nutrition, transfers or essential equipment may face much greater risk.
Providers and public services therefore need a way to understand dependency before disruption occurs. This does not mean labelling everyone receiving home support as high risk. It means identifying which interruptions would create serious harm and how long each person could reasonably manage without normal support.
Information also needs to remain usable when normal digital or communication systems are impaired. Contact details, medication information, key risks and emergency support arrangements should not depend entirely on one device, office or platform.
Families are essential to these plans, but assumptions need to be tested. A relative listed as an emergency contact may live hundreds of kilometres away. A spouse may also be frail. Adult children may be affected by the same disaster. Preparedness becomes weaker when an informal caregiver is treated as automatically available.
This is where emergency preparedness in community-based services differs from institutional planning: continuity depends on understanding a distributed network of people, places and relationships rather than controlling one site.
Scenario: home support is disrupted across Hatay
An older woman in Hatay lives with her daughter, who provides most daily support. The woman has limited mobility, diabetes and hypertension and needs help transferring from bed to chair. A municipal service provides additional practical support, while health needs are managed through local services.
Following a major earthquake, their home is unsafe. Mother and daughter leave quickly, taking some medication but leaving a walking aid and other belongings behind. Mobile communication is intermittent and roads are congested.
The daughter can continue some support, but the environment has changed. Her mother cannot safely use standard temporary toilet facilities and has difficulty sleeping on the available bedding. Their normal pharmacy is inaccessible, and the daughter is uncertain how to replace medication.
A response based solely on providing shelter would therefore be incomplete. The woman needs accessible accommodation, medication continuity, mobility support and a way of reconnecting with health services. The daughter also needs practical assistance because her caregiving capacity has been reduced by displacement.
Once immediate safety is secured, information about the woman’s health and functional needs needs to travel with her through temporary accommodation and any subsequent relocation. If she is moved to another province, continuity becomes an inter-jurisdictional issue rather than simply a local one.
The scenario illustrates why emergency preparedness should map dependency, not just addresses. The relevant question is not merely where a person lives before a disaster, but what they need in order to remain safe if that location, their equipment and their usual support network suddenly become unavailable.
Medication, equipment and supply continuity can determine whether people remain independent
Long-term support often depends on ordinary items that become critical when supply chains fail. Medicines, continence products, nutritional supplies, oxygen, batteries, mobility equipment and replacement parts can determine whether someone can remain safely in a community setting.
Emergency inventories therefore need to be connected to real patterns of dependency. Stockpiling indiscriminately is neither efficient nor necessarily useful. The stronger approach identifies high-consequence dependencies and plans alternative routes of supply.
Assistive technology deserves particular attention. A wheelchair is not simply equipment that can be substituted by carrying someone. It supports mobility, autonomy and protection from secondary health problems. Hearing aids, communication devices and prostheses can be equally important to someone’s ability to understand information, move safely and participate in decisions.
The 2023 earthquakes demonstrated this directly. WHO reported both new disability among injured survivors and loss of existing prostheses, while subsequent rehabilitation work included provision of wheelchairs, crutches, walking frames and other assistive products.
This connects emergency preparedness with medication, equipment and supply-chain continuity. Long-term care resilience is partly determined by whether essential everyday supports can survive disruption or be replaced quickly.
Workforce continuity begins with recognising that workers are also disaster-affected citizens
Care continuity depends on people. Yet emergency plans sometimes assume that the existing workforce will simply report for duty during a disaster.
That assumption is particularly fragile in a large earthquake. Care workers, nurses, social workers, physiotherapists and managers may themselves be injured, displaced or unable to travel. They may have children, older relatives or disabled family members requiring immediate support. Roads may be blocked and communications unreliable.
A realistic workforce plan therefore needs redundancy rather than heroism.
Services should understand critical roles, minimum safe staffing, alternative reporting arrangements and where staff can be redeployed. Cross-training may allow some tasks to continue when specialist personnel are temporarily unavailable, but scope of practice and competence still matter. Volunteers can supplement capacity without being expected to undertake skilled care for which they are not trained.
Mutual-aid arrangements can extend resilience across organisations or areas. However, those arrangements need to exist before the emergency and clarify how staff, transport and resources will be coordinated.
Preparedness also includes worker wellbeing. The psychological impact of disaster affects responders as well as survivors. Following the 2023 earthquakes, substantial numbers of responders reported physical or mental-health effects associated with their deployment. Sustainable response therefore requires rest, supervision, psychological support and safe working conditions rather than treating exhaustion as evidence of commitment.
Organizations considering their own capacity can use the Predictive Workforce Risk Module to explore workforce vulnerabilities and service-continuity risks. It is not an emergency command system, but the principle is useful: staffing risk should be understood before disruption exposes it.
Accessible communication is a safety intervention
Emergency information has limited value if the people most dependent on it cannot understand or act upon it. Older and disabled people may experience hearing loss, visual impairment, cognitive impairment, limited literacy or communication difficulties. Some people may not use smartphones or digital government services confidently. Others may depend heavily on family members to interpret information.
Preparedness therefore needs multiple communication routes. Warnings, evacuation instructions and information about available support should be designed with accessibility in mind rather than adapted after an emergency has begun.
Digital systems can improve speed and reach, but they create dependency on electricity, networks, charged devices and digital confidence. Redundant channels remain important: broadcast media, telephone contact, local announcements, face-to-face outreach and communication through community networks may all have roles depending on the situation.
Information also needs consistency. Conflicting messages about where to go, whether a facility is operating or how medication can be replaced can increase anxiety and create unnecessary movement during an already unstable situation.
For people with dementia, communication is also relational. A technically accurate emergency instruction may be ineffective if the person cannot understand why familiar routines have changed. Family members, familiar staff and appropriately trained responders can help reduce distress and support safer transitions.
These issues connect with communication, notification and coordination. Accessible communication is not an additional courtesy within emergency response. For many people, it is part of the mechanism through which safety is achieved.
Scenario: an evacuation warning reaches a disabled adult but not in a usable form
A disabled man lives with his parents in an apartment in İzmir. He has significant hearing impairment and limited mobility. His parents are older and provide most everyday support. After an earthquake, authorities advise residents in several affected buildings to move to designated temporary areas while structural assessments are completed.
The family receives information through several digital channels, but the messages do not initially explain accessibility arrangements at the temporary location. His parents can help him leave the apartment, but they cannot safely manage a long distance without transport.
A locally coordinated response identifies the household’s mobility requirement and arranges accessible transport. At the receiving location, visual information supplements spoken announcements, and the family can establish where medication and accessible sanitation are available.
The difference between the two responses is not the existence of an evacuation order. It is whether the emergency system has translated that order into an achievable action for this particular household.
After the event, local review identifies that accessible transport information should have been included earlier in public communication and that households requiring additional evacuation support need clearer routes for requesting it.
This illustrates the value of designing accessibility into emergency systems from the beginning. A warning that cannot be acted upon does not provide equal protection merely because everyone received the same message.
Temporary shelter has to support care as well as survival
Assembly areas and temporary accommodation are essential components of disaster response, but the needs of older and disabled people extend beyond physical space.
Accessibility involves routes into and around the site, toilets, washing facilities, sleeping arrangements, privacy and the ability to use mobility equipment. People with chronic disease may need refrigeration for medicines or access to electricity. Someone receiving personal care may require privacy and appropriate assistance. People with cognitive impairment may need calmer environments and support to remain oriented.
The Twelfth Development Plan’s requirement that assembly and temporary shelter areas recognise differentiated needs is therefore operationally important. It shifts accessibility from individual adaptation towards system design.
Temporary environments can also increase safeguarding risks. Crowded accommodation, disrupted family networks and reduced privacy may expose older or disabled people to neglect, exploitation or abuse. People who cannot communicate easily may struggle to report concerns.
Safeguarding responsibilities do not disappear during emergencies. They need to adapt to circumstances in which ordinary oversight may be weakened. Staff and volunteers should know how concerns are escalated, while unnecessary restrictions imposed in the name of safety should still be questioned.
This creates a connection with risk management and assurance. Emergency flexibility is necessary, but flexibility should not mean that accountability becomes invisible.
Rehabilitation belongs inside disaster planning from the beginning
One of the clearest lessons from the 2023 earthquakes is that rehabilitation cannot be treated only as a later stage of recovery.
Earthquakes can cause fractures, amputations, spinal cord injuries, traumatic brain injuries and other conditions requiring early rehabilitation. Delays can contribute to secondary complications, loss of function and longer hospital stays. At the same time, people with pre-existing disabilities may lose access to physiotherapy, assistive technology or community rehabilitation because facilities, transport or equipment have been disrupted.
WHO’s work following the earthquakes included strengthening physiotherapy services through primary health-care centres and supporting access to assistive products. This illustrates a wider system principle: specialist rehabilitation capacity and community access need to connect.
For long-term care, rehabilitation is also about preventing an emergency from creating avoidable dependency. An older person who experiences injury, prolonged immobility or disruption to normal activity may lose functional ability even without a catastrophic trauma. Early mobilisation, appropriate equipment and restorative support can influence whether that person regains independence or develops continuing care needs.
Recovery planning therefore needs to connect hospitals, rehabilitation services, primary care, home support and family caregivers. Discharge into damaged housing or inaccessible temporary accommodation can undermine clinical progress.
The goal is not merely survival from the initial disaster. It is preservation or restoration of function, participation and autonomy over the months and years that follow.
Scenario: survival creates a new long-term support pathway
A 62-year-old man from Adıyaman sustains major injuries during an earthquake and undergoes a lower-limb amputation. Before the disaster he was working, independent and provided support to an older parent. His home is destroyed.
Emergency surgery saves his life, but the decisions that follow determine much of his longer-term outcome. He needs rehabilitation, a prosthetic pathway, psychological support and accommodation that allows him to move safely. His family also needs to reorganise because the person who previously provided assistance now requires support himself.
If these needs are managed as separate episodes, progress in one part of the system can be lost elsewhere. A successful rehabilitation programme has limited effect if temporary housing is inaccessible. Provision of a prosthesis is insufficient without follow-up, maintenance and functional training. Discharge planning needs to understand where the person will live and what support is realistically available.
Over time, the objective shifts from treatment towards participation: mobility outside the home, return to family roles, possible employment and community life.
His case also becomes part of a wider population need. When a disaster creates many people requiring rehabilitation simultaneously, capacity planning has to move beyond individual referrals towards workforce, equipment and geographic availability.
The long-term lesson is that disaster recovery can create an entirely new cohort of people needing continuing support. Emergency preparedness therefore has to anticipate not only continuity for existing users but new disability and rehabilitation demand after the event.
Data can improve preparedness, but vulnerability registers require careful governance
One apparent solution to identifying people who may need additional assistance is a register of vulnerable residents. Such information can be valuable, but it creates both practical and ethical challenges.
Needs change quickly. Someone recorded as independent may experience a stroke. A person previously receiving extensive support may move. Contact information becomes outdated. A family caregiver may no longer be available. A static list can therefore create false confidence.
Personal information about disability, health and dependency is also sensitive. Data collection needs a legitimate purpose, proportionate access controls, clear responsibility for updating information and appropriate protection. Emergency usefulness does not remove privacy obligations.
A stronger model combines relevant information with operational processes. Services that already know individuals should maintain current emergency information appropriate to their role. Local planning can use aggregated information to understand likely demand. Where individual-level information is required for emergency assistance, governance should define who can access it, under what circumstances and for what purpose.
The challenge connects with wider data governance and information accountability. More data do not automatically create greater resilience. Accurate, current and usable information does.
Organizations examining digital dependencies can also use the Digital Transformation, AI and Cybersecurity Readiness Assessment to explore resilience, information governance and technological dependencies. Again, it is not a Turkish emergency-management standard, but it can help structure questions about whether digital infrastructure remains dependable when normal operating conditions fail.
Preparedness needs exercises that test care realities
Emergency plans become credible through testing. Exercises can reveal assumptions that are difficult to see on paper: an evacuation route that cannot accommodate wheelchairs, emergency contact information that is outdated, a generator that does not power the required equipment or a staffing model that assumes everyone can reach the workplace.
For long-term care settings, exercises should include the complexity of the population rather than simulate only able-bodied evacuation.
Tabletop exercises can explore decisions without physically moving vulnerable residents. Practical drills can test selected components such as communications, equipment, staff call-out or transfer arrangements. Multi-agency exercises can examine how providers connect with municipalities, health services and emergency structures.
The most important stage occurs afterwards. Lessons should become changes in plans, training, equipment or agreements. Repeated problems should be visible to leadership rather than rediscovered at the next exercise.
This is where after-action review and system learning become part of preparedness. Türkiye’s experience after 2023 has generated substantial operational learning nationally and internationally. The same discipline is useful at provider and local level: response experience should change future readiness.
The Quality Improvement Action Plan Builder can help organisations translate identified gaps into actions, ownership and review. It does not replace AFAD guidance or country-specific emergency requirements, but it provides a practical method for preventing lessons from remaining only in meeting minutes.
Recovery is a long-term care issue, not simply reconstruction
Post-disaster recovery is often visible through rebuilt homes, hospitals, roads and public infrastructure. Those investments are essential, but social recovery has a different timescale.
People may live with bereavement, trauma, disability, disrupted employment and fragmented family networks long after buildings have been replaced. Older people displaced from familiar neighbourhoods can lose social connections that supported independence. Family caregivers may be supporting relatives while also rebuilding their own lives. New disability can change housing, employment and income needs.
TASİP, Türkiye’s post-disaster recovery framework introduced in 2025, is significant because it explicitly extends recovery beyond physical reconstruction to social, economic, environmental and cultural losses. For long-term care, that broader understanding is essential.
Recovery planning should therefore ask whether people have regained functional and social stability, not simply whether emergency accommodation has ended.
An older person relocated far from their previous community may have permanent housing but reduced access to family or familiar services. A disabled survivor may have received acute rehabilitation but still face inaccessible transport or employment barriers. A caregiver may have resumed providing support while experiencing unresolved trauma themselves.
The strongest recovery systems connect reconstruction with health, rehabilitation, social services, accessible housing and community rebuilding. This is also where the distinction between emergency expenditure and long-term investment becomes less clear. Rebuilding a service to the same level of vulnerability that existed before the disaster preserves risk rather than reducing it.
Climate and multiple hazards widen the preparedness agenda
Earthquakes understandably dominate much of Türkiye’s disaster planning, but long-term care resilience needs a multi-hazard perspective. Flooding, wildfires, extreme heat, severe winter conditions and other events can disrupt services in different ways.
Heat may be particularly dangerous for older people and people with chronic conditions, while electricity failure can affect cooling and medical equipment. Wildfire evacuation may develop rapidly. Flooding can isolate communities and interrupt home visits. Severe weather can affect transport and staffing without damaging a care facility directly.
The underlying continuity questions remain similar: who depends on support, what infrastructure is critical, how quickly does risk escalate and what alternative arrangements exist?
This makes extreme-weather and climate-response planning increasingly relevant to ageing and disability services. The objective is not to create a separate plan for every conceivable event. It is to understand common dependencies while recognising hazard-specific risks.
A residential facility may need both earthquake evacuation arrangements and a heat plan. A home-support organisation may need contingency routes for both flood disruption and severe winter weather. A municipality may need accessible evacuation arrangements that can operate across several emergency types.
Resilience grows when those plans share information, responsibilities and learning rather than existing as disconnected documents.
Governance needs to connect national command with individual continuity
Türkiye possesses substantial national disaster-management infrastructure. The challenge for long-term care is ensuring that this capability connects all the way down to the person who depends on daily support.
Different actors control different parts of that chain. AFAD leads national disaster and emergency coordination. Ministries hold responsibilities across health and social services. Provincial and local structures translate plans into place-based response. Municipalities contribute services and community infrastructure. Residential and community providers control their own operational continuity. Families and civil society provide extensive support outside formal systems.
No single organisation can guarantee continuity. But responsibility can still be clear.
National policy can define expectations for inclusive preparedness. Local authorities can understand population needs and accessible infrastructure. Providers can maintain credible continuity plans. Health services can protect time-critical treatment. Social services can identify people whose support networks have collapsed. Emergency structures can ensure that shelter, communication and evacuation recognise functional needs.
Governance becomes effective when information flows in both directions. Local experience should influence national guidance. Repeated equipment shortages, accessibility problems or failed communication routes should become system-learning issues rather than isolated incidents.
Organizations examining cross-sector responsibility can use the Governance Maturity Assessment to structure questions about accountability, assurance and decision rights. It is not an AFAD framework, but the underlying question is directly relevant: during disruption, everyone should know what they control, what they escalate and who is responsible for acting.
The international lesson is to design disaster resilience around continuity of ordinary life
Türkiye’s experience offers lessons for other ageing societies, but those lessons should not be reduced to earthquake response techniques. Countries face different hazards, administrative structures, care systems and resources.
The more transferable principle is that emergency preparedness should begin with the dependencies of everyday life.
People become vulnerable during disasters partly because the infrastructure supporting ordinary independence disappears. Electricity, medication, transport, communication, assistive equipment, caregivers and familiar environments can all be disrupted simultaneously. A person who manages well under normal conditions may require substantial assistance when those supports vanish.
Preparedness therefore needs to connect disaster management with long-term care, disability policy, health services, housing, community infrastructure and family support. It should recognise that evacuation is a process rather than simply movement from one building to another. Recovery should include rehabilitation and social reconstruction. Accessibility should be built into systems before emergencies occur.
Türkiye’s Twelfth Development Plan is notable in explicitly recognising differentiated needs within disaster management. The continuing task is implementation: guidance, training, accessible facilities, tested continuity arrangements and learning from real events.
Other systems can adapt that principle without replicating Türkiye’s institutional architecture. The relevant question everywhere is whether emergency plans protect people whose independence depends on support that may itself be disrupted.
Conclusion
Türkiye’s disaster experience demonstrates why long-term care resilience cannot begin after an earthquake, flood or wildfire has occurred. Older and disabled people may depend on medication, assistive technology, personal support, rehabilitation, accessible transport and family caregivers every day. A disaster can interrupt several of those supports at once while simultaneously creating new disability and care needs.
Türkiye already has substantial foundations on which to build. TAMP provides a national response architecture, TARAP addresses risk reduction and TASİP extends planning into post-disaster recovery. The Twelfth Development Plan explicitly requires differentiated consideration of older and disabled people and calls for appropriate guidance, training and accessible temporary arrangements. Experience from the 2023 earthquakes has also strengthened understanding of health-system resilience, rehabilitation and the long duration of recovery.
The next stage is to make continuity of support increasingly visible within that architecture. Residential services need tested plans based on actual dependency. Community services need prioritisation arrangements for dispersed populations. Emergency shelters and communications need to be accessible. Workforce plans need to recognise that staff are affected citizens too. Rehabilitation needs to begin early and continue into community recovery. Information needs to remain useful without becoming an ungoverned vulnerability register.
For Türkiye, effective preparedness ultimately means protecting more than survival. It means preserving the support, function, relationships and autonomy that allow people to continue living their lives when the infrastructure around them is under its greatest pressure.