Serkan Tatoglu managed to save his four children when the earthquake destroyed their home in southeastern Turkey. The family is now safe, but his 6-year-old daughter keeps asking him: “Dad, are we going to die?”

The province of Kahramanmaras – with 1.1 million inhabitants before the disaster – the scenes that have been unfolding for a week are reminiscent of a dystopian movie: ruins everywhere, coffins left on the side of the road, ambulance sirens screaming… Scenes terrifying for children who lived through the February 6 earthquake, which killed at least 32,000 people in Turkey, according to the still provisional count.

“My children were very affected by the earthquake”, said Serkan Tatoglu, whose wife and children, aged 6, 11, 14 and 15, fled to a camp next to the stadium in the city of Kahramanmaras. “We lost about a dozen relatives. My children don’t know it yet but the youngest has been in shock from the aftershocks. He keeps asking me if we’re going to die“, he said.

“I don’t want to show them the bodies. With my wife, we hold them in our arms and tell them that everything is fine,” he added.

Hilal Ayar, 25, is very worried about her 7-year-old son, Mohammed Emir. “He’s not doing well psychologically, he’s not sleeping.”

Parents suffer too

Sweda Deveci, a psychologist who works with the Turkish branch of the non-governmental organization Doctors Worldwide in Kahramanmaras, finds that the parents themselves have been affected by the earthquake.

“A mother confessed to me: “Everybody tells me to be strong but I can’t do anything, I can’t take care of my children, I can’t even eat.”

“Some of the kids don’t seem to realize what’s happened,” explains Devjee, with three of them drawing next to her. “I don’t talk to them much about the earthquake. We let them draw and we see to what extent their anxiety appears in the drawings,” he said.

“Child-centered policies should be urgently implemented,” urged Esin Coman, an expert on the protection of minors’ rights. As he argued, children adapt faster than their parents, but everything must be done to overcome the ordeal.

Psychologist Cihan Celik tweeted the message sent to him by a volunteer paramedic from an affected area. During the evacuation of the area, the children are anxious: “The injured children asked many times along the way: Where is mom, where is dad? Did you kidnap me?’

Flood of calls

Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay said that 574 children rescued from rubble were unaccompanied. Of these, 76 were eventually reunited with family members.

A team of 200 volunteers, including psychologists, lawyers and doctors, set up coordination centers in the ten affected provinces. Their goal: to locate unaccompanied children and return them to their families, with the assistance of the police.

“We are getting a flood of calls,” said Hatiche Goz, a volunteer at the Hatay province coordination center. The group also records families looking for their children, gathering information on their age, characteristics and address. “We have dedicated teams. They constantly analyze all the information we receive and compare it with the hospital files,” Hatice explained.

“When I saw the list yesterday, the number of missing children we have been informed about was 180. We have handed over 30 to their families,” he added.

Children who are pulled alive from the wreckage are taken to the nearest hospitals but are not always accompanied by a parent. “If the child can’t talk, the family can’t find them,” Hatiche commented.