Impact of the 1999 East Marmara Earthquake in Turkey Aytu ¨l Kasapog ˘lu Ankara University (Turkey) Mehmet Ecevit Middle East Technical University (Turkey) This paper studies responses to the 1999 Marmara Earthquake (Turkey) in which 18,000 people died, 50,000 people were injured, there were 5,000 building col- lapses and 340,000 damaged buildings, 14,513 businesses closed, 150,000 people became unemployed, and 129,338 were forced to live in prefabricated houses. This research is based on a survey comprising 500 interviews carried out a year after the earthquake. Responsible behavior as the dependent variable is statistically tested with several socio-demographic and attitude variables. The findings indicate social solidarity, knowledge, basic needs, desire for change and psychological status of the disaster survivors were all adversely affected. It was observed that education, employment, social security, knowledge and fatalism have varying impacts on re- sponsible behavior related to preparedness for future earthquakes. KEY WORDS: earthquake; disaster; preparedness; Turkey. Available evidence indicates that social research on disasters operates with conflicting assumptions about the nature of the phenomena being studied. Most researchers combine characteristics of hazards with disasters, and it seems that the distinction between natural and technological disaster is rooted in the latter conflation. In both cases, the primary focus is typically on the supposed agent involved, as a phenotypical (surface and manifest) approach. Although most of the researchers continue to focus on agents, Please address correspondence to Dr. Aytu ¨l Kasapog ˘lu, Department of Sociology, Ankara University, Sihhiye, Ankara, Turkey; e-mail: kasap@humanity.ankara.edu.tr. Population and Environment, Vol. 24, No. 4, March 2003  2003 Human Sciences Press, Inc. 339