Turkey: One year after the February 6 earthquake

THE Abdullah Yanar planted flowers in front of the container he is staying in to make it look more like a normal home for his family, who are living in temporary shelters in southern Turkey after last year’s devastating earthquake.

THE 7.8 magnitude earthquake last February, the deadliest in modern Turkey, killed several of Yanar’s relatives and destroyed his apartment. He, his wife, daughter and son were thus forced to move first to a tent and then from one container to another.

“Thank God we have a roof over our heads. But it’s a bit difficult to live in a container with two children,” Yanar said at his home in Hatay, the province hardest hit by the earthquake that hit southern Turkey and northern Syria.

Yanar, 38, a local government worker, said that despite partial reconstruction, it will take a long time to restore the historic provincial capital of Antioch.

Faced with unaffordable rents for “real houses” and the unpredictable supply of water and electricity in the 21-square-meter container. meters, he is not very optimistic about the future of his family.

“I have no expectations. We don’t enjoy life. But again, a thousand thanks to God,” he declared.

The earthquake that occurred in the early morning hours of February 6 leveled small towns and parts of big cities in the southeastern part of the country. It has killed more than 53,000 people and nearly 6,000 in neighboring Syriawhile leaving behind millions of homeless people.

A year later, those who survived and remain in Hatay Province are still trying to deal with the impact.

Much of the province collapsed in the earthquake but hundreds of damaged houses have yet to be demolished and many of the two-thirds of Hatay’s residents who remained in the province now live in shipping containers.

In October, Yanar’s family moved into another container, which has a small living room with an open kitchen, a bedroom and a bathroom. He says the quadrupling of rents in the area means he has no choice but to leave.

In the same container settlement, Ali Riza and Sunai Ghazaloglou sit on a sofa with their daughter Ela between them. The nine-year-old was the only one of their three daughters to survive when their house collapsed. Ella plays with a teddy bear without uttering a word. She is afraid to enter buildings and does not go to her four-story school.

“We were a happy family before the earthquake. I had a job, now I can’t work anymore after undergoing three operations,” said Ali Riza, who suffered a serious back injury when the earthquake struck. For now, his family is covering daily expenses with funding provided to victims by the Turkish Red Crescent.

Haunting memories

After the disaster, President Tayyip Erdogan’s government promised to rebuild 680,000 homes in 11 provinces within two years, including about 250,000 in Hatay.

Residents say the containers are generally quite warm at night. Other evacuees ended up in prefabricated houses that are slightly larger with two bedrooms and a living room.

Among them is Gulcan Yilmaz, 47, a mother of two, who was miraculously saved from the rubble of her eight-story building five days after the earthquake. “My legs and arms were hanging in the air,” he said, describing how he became trapped in the rubble. “When I freed my hands, I pulled out my hair that was caught somewhere. Then my broken arm landed on my leg. I sat on a thin board for five days. I couldn’t move my legs. Birds were coming, I was talking to them under the rubble.”

Yilmaz was then flown to Adana province by helicopter. When she opened her eyes in the intensive care unit, she saw that doctors had amputated her legs as she developed gangrene from the cold. She has since returned to Hatay for physiotherapy with her artificial limbs and after staying in a tent for a while was moved to a prefabricated house in Antioch.

“In my eyes, this prefabricated house is a palace. But I want to live in one of those new apartments that the government is building,” he said.

Dreams about work

Some earthquake survivors continue to live in tents despite overnight temperatures dropping to minus 4 degrees Celsius.

In Samandag, a Mediterranean coastal city in Turkey’s southeastern tip, Ozden Kar, 42, lives with her family and other relatives in tents set up outside a municipal building, which was also damaged and whose services are also housed in container.

Carr says they spent the winter without heat in the donated tents. The authorities referred them to a container settlement in Antiochia, about a 40-minute drive away, but they want to stay in their town as the children’s school is there and her husband’s work, which is a cattle farmer, is located there. “Everything is here, I cannot go to Antioch,” he declared.

Twelve of Carr’s relatives died in the earthquake. Carr said the family can’t move into an apartment because of the high rent – ​​and the fear of apartment security.

“My daughter freaks out at the slightest movement. We are all afraid».

Nadir Kabaroglou, Carr’s 75-year-old mother, suffers from asthma and has had to see a doctor regularly since the earthquake. The toxic dust from the collapsed buildings worsened her condition and she can no longer leave the scene without a mask.

Other residents housed in tents spoke of their desire to stay close to relatives and in familiar places despite offers for containers elsewhere in the Hatay.

In Antioch’s historic Uzun Charsi bazaar, parts of which withstood the earthquake despite much of the city center collapsing, the economic problems are now evident now that a third of residents and tourists have disappeared.

“Tourists no longer visit Hatay and many locals have left the city or live in containers on the outskirts. Recovery will take time,” said Fatih Uzunparmak, owner of a well-known local pastry shop, whose shop used to have queues.

The shoemaker Mustafa Okai says shopkeepers in the Uzun Charsi bazaar are still facing financial difficulties. But he remains hopeful that things will get better in the coming months. “I took loans from the banks, now I have to pay them back,” he said. “Business is sluggish at present, but I hope it will pick up after the winter.”