"yes, they're all fine, but . . ." It is an Irish friend who lives in the Turkish resort of Bodrum but was on holiday in Ireland when the earthquake struck. She was besieged by anxious inquiries from Irish friends and relatives, whose hazy knowledge of Turkish geography obscured the fact that Bodrum is far from the area affected.

Those of us who think we know Turkey think we know differently. No problems for your friends in Bodrum, presumably? Her response is like a slap in the face. "Yes, they're all fine, but of course, everyone has somebody in Istanbul."

Of course. We've been hearing a lot about the rural-urban drift which led to the construction of the crumpled apartment blocks. We know that much of the devastation took place in poor, working-class areas. But in that simple statement there is an appalling truth: last Tuesday's earthquake has shaken not just the Marmara region, but the whole of Turkey.

Everyone has somebody in Istanbul. It's probably true of every large city in every predominantly rural country; but the peculiarly localised, almost tribalised, nature of Turkish society makes it truer in Turkey than anywhere else.

On a trip to the Mediterranean city of Antalya recently I was invited to visit a family from Erzurum, miles away in the mountains to the north-east. A young married couple, shyly proud of their brand-new house in a dusty suburb, its water still unconnected to the mains supply.

Next door, a feisty widowed aunt, also from Erzurum. A guided tour of the "street" - a succession of building sites at various stages of completion - revealed that every house, or bit of a house, belonged to a family from Erzurum.

Furthermore, any notion that this might be some bizarre migratory pattern peculiar to Erzurum was swiftly dispelled on my return to the touristic city centre. Amid much smiling and waving of arms I was made to understand that everybody on my street came from a set of neighbouring villages in Cappadocia. Which means, in turn, that if anything were to happen to those two streets in Antalya, the shock waves would be felt all the way across Anatolia.

The best part of the population of entire villages could well disappear overnight; the wage-earning part, not to put too fine a point on it.

Multiply that by hundreds - thousands - and you have something approximating to the situation in the sprawling industrial suburbs of the north. The crumpled apartment blocks may not have been properly anchored to the earth, but their inhabitants were rooted to the rest of the country in a way that will cause socio-economic aftershocks for years, perhaps for generations, to come.

What, precisely, the nature of those aftershocks will be, it's difficult to say. In the immediate aftermath of the quake people seemed to be stunned into a numb silence; the outpouring of grief as the scale of the disaster slowly became evident was followed, in turn, by an outbreak of anger as people lashed out at what they felt was the laggardly response of officialdom to the relief effort. The latest signs, however, are that the tragedy has created an enormous groundswell of solidarity across what has often been seen, certainly from a Western perspective, as a divided country. Ordinary Turks are rolling up their sleeves and mucking in; questions of religion and ethnic origin seem to have been set aside, for the moment at least.

Small acts of heroism have inspired larger ones. A shopkeeper from Konya loaded up his truck with bread, pasta, cheese and rice and drove for 11 hours to hand them out. Banks in Istanbul have granted paid leave to those of their staff who volunteer for aid work. Entire operations have been co-ordinated in a matter of hours over the Internet.

It will be the first time Western journalists will have witnessed the Turkish genius for pragmatism at first hand and on a grand scale. It will also be the first time that the liberal Western media, accustomed to the idea of Turkey as a somewhat dubious democracy beset by ethnic tensions at home and bent on acts of aggression abroad, has seen Turks as helpless (if not entirely innocent) victims.

Theories will emerge. One already doing the rounds is that disillusionment with the army's sluggish public service performance over the past week has spread like wildfire among the general population. This may be partly true, but only as part of a wider truth that, in a changing Turkey, a generation of teenagers reared on Websites and mobile phones is less than enthusiastic - certainly less enthusiastic than previous generations - about compulsory military service.

Right now, of course, the last thing Turkey needs is theories. Another voice on my cellphone this weekend was that of the mother of a Turkish friend who also happened to be in Ireland on holiday last week.

For several minutes, through the niceties of polite chit-chat, she made brave conversation. Yes, they had enjoyed their stay in Ireland very much. Yes, everybody back home - everybody in the immediate family, at least - was OK, though they were, of course, sleeping in the street for the moment. No, no need to thank her for the present from Turkey - it was nothing, just a little memory, that was all. "It is I who thank you," she said, "for the things you have written about us in the past."

Then her voice cracked. "Thank you so much for the things you have written about us in the past," she said. "And please, please help our country now." Which is just about the point where words run out.

A relief fund for victims of the Turkish earthquake has been set up by the Turkish embassy in Dublin. Donations can be made through Allied Irish Banks (account number: 44347065; sorting code: 93-12-25) and Bank of Ireland (account number: 64853221; sorting code: 90-09-73). Cheques made payable to "Turkish Embassy Earthquake Victims Relief Fund" can also be sent directly to the embassy at 11 Clyde Road, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4