It was one of the images that went around the world.

The photo of a father holding the hand of his dead daughter in the devastation following the February 6 earthquake in Turkey has moved the entire world and caused an outpouring of solidarity for this devastated man.

Almost three weeks after this disaster that killed more than 44,000 people in Turkey, Adem Altan, the AFP photographer who took the picture, found Mesut Hancer.

This dying Turk, father of four children, including Ermak, 15, who died buried under the rubble of an eight-story building, recently left the southeastern Turkish city of Kahramanmaras to settle in Ankara.

“I also lost my mother, my brothers, my nephews in the earthquake. But burying your child is nothing compared,” says the 40-year-old Hancher. “It’s an indescribable pain.”

Today, the family is trying to rebuild a life away from Kahramanmaras, the town near the epicenter of the 7.8-magnitude earthquake that devastated southeastern Turkey and northern Syria.

The photo of Mesut Hancer, disfigured, sitting in the cold and rain, wearing an orange jacket and not letting go of his dead child’s hand, became a symbol of a disaster that claimed tens of thousands of lives.

Making the front page of many newspapers around the world, reproduced millions of times online, the photo caused an outpouring of solidarity for the father and his family.

A businessman from Ankara offered them accommodation and offered to hire Handcer as an administrator at his private TV channel.

“Like an Angel”

A gift from an artist, a painting depicting Ermak as an angel next to her father now adorns the family living room.

“I couldn’t let go of her hand. My daughter was sleeping like an angel in her bed,” he says.

At the time of the earthquake, which occurred at 04:17, Mesut Hancer was working in his bakery.

He immediately called his family, looking for news. Their one-story home, though damaged, was standing and his wife and three grown children were safe.

But the family could not reach the youngest child, Ermak, who had slept with her grandmother that night. The teenager wanted to spend more time with her cousins ​​who came to visit from Istanbul and Hatay.

Worried, Huntsher ran to his mother’s house.

There, he found the eight-story building torn down, transformed into a mountain of rubble from which emerged, scattered, remnants of everyday life. And in the middle of the ruins his daughter.

No rescue teams would arrive until the next day, leaving Hancher and other residents alone in their desperate efforts to find their loved ones under the rubble.

Handcher tried to remove Ermak’s body by pulling out concrete blocks with his bare hands. In vain.

So he remained motionless, gnawed by immense grief, sitting beside his dead daughter.

“I held her hand, stroked her hair, kissed her cheeks,” he said.

Later, he noticed an AFP photographer, Adem Altan, taking pictures.

“Take pictures of my child,” he whispered then, his voice cracking and trembling.