ANTAKYA — Hatay province was a giant construction site by the anniversary of the great earthquake. The people who still try to get on with their lives in tents and containers lack sleep and hope. They are angry at their Turkish compatriots who believe life in Hatay is back to normal. They are getting even more hopeless due to the threat of asbestos in the city and the changes made to the urban renovation laws because most of them cannot buy the buildings to be constructed over their properties.
The earthquake that scientists had been warning about for decades happened at 04:17 a.m. on Feb. 6, 2023. Two quakes that occurred approximately nine hours apart hit 11 provinces in Turkey — with Hatay, Adıyaman and Malatya hit the hardest — and affected more than 13 million people in eastern and southeastern Turkey. We lost more than 50,000 of our people alongside a large amount of animals, dreams, memories, and hopes because of faulty buildings and the unpreparedness of the rescue crews.
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Before the anniversary of the tragedy we traveled to Hatay, one of the locations that was affected most by the earthquake, where tens of thousands of lives were lost and the whole city was leveled — leaving only dust, trauma and a deep grief behind.
The pain of losing close friends and relatives alongside their beloved city is still fresh in the memory of most of the people we interviewed. Today’s view of Antakya, the central district of Hatay, is a total heartache for those who know how it was before the earthquake — a city known as a cradle of civilizations with tolerance, gastronomy and history. Wreckage is still being moved all over the city as darkened curtains swindle from the windows of empty apartment buildings where missing walls leave the insides exposed. The damaged but standing buildings have spray-painted messages on them: “middle damage,” “lawsuit ongoing”, “heavy damage”.
Tired people are carrying sacks and cardboard boxes on their backs from one place to another on the dusty streets. The empty lots of destroyed buildings seem as if silent screams are still rising from them as some people comb the wreckage with their hands in search of scrap iron to sell.
Forgetting what sleep is
Selahattin Kılıç is 56 years old. His son Mustafa, daughter-in-law Hasret and five-year-old grandson Asel were among the 28 people whose bodies were not recovered from the wreckage of Ilke apartment building which used to stand in central Antakya. Their names are on the list of 142 missing people who were reported to a local NGO recently founded for solidarity. “We forgot what sleep was. We have been awake at night for a year and we wander around without a clue during the days,” Kılıç said, adding that his hair has turned white within the past year.
Kılıç said they have been all over Turkey since the earthquake, searching in hospitals and orphanages. He is furious when speaking about the helplessness they feel after several reports to the police and prosecutors remained unanswered. He spoke of his pain when he heard what the minister of family and social services, Mahinur Göktaş, declared: “There is not a single one of our children missing after the earthquakes.”
“They made us experience Feb. 6 once more with this statement. We are devastated,” he said. The Kılıç family have put the photographs of their son and grandson away in drawers to avoid further agony. They feel their life has become hell and hope to have a tombstone for their loved ones one day.
Meanwhile, some politicians are making promises. Opposition party IYI proposed a motion in parliament to look for missing children in January 2024 while the main opposition party CHP offered another motion in March 2023 to address the problems of missing people and unattended minors. The leading Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its ally, the MHP, turned both motions down.
Children at risk
Approximately five and a half million children in the earthquake-affected zone are at risk of anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder, according to the United Nations.
People try to get on with their lives in tents and containers after surviving the earthquake itself, the chaos that followed, and a new life in a city turned construction site.
We met Yazgın Danışman, 31, at a container town in central Antakya province. She is a mother of three; the children are five, four and one and a half years old. She said the children are very bored, and are suffering psychologically — they talk about the earthquake non-stop.
“The children have neither a regular sleep pattern nor a diet now. We are five people living in a container. Who supports us? Nobody!” she said, adding: “They shouldn’t come knocking at on our door for votes. Nobody came to ask what we need all this time.”
Danışman is angry. She blames the state for not overseeing that buildings were renovated with anti-seismic measures when the opportunity arose. She said they are stuck inside a 21-square-meter container, they struggle to buy baby formula, and don’t even have a TV.
“The state maybe will deliver the houses to owners in a few years but what will we, the tenants, do then? Will we be out on the streets with our children?” As we spoke, one of her daughters was playing with a dustpan by herself on the concrete floor on which the containers were lined side by side.
Struggling to cope
Another tragedy is ongoing at the very next container.
Mevlüde Aydın, 42, lost her mother, father, husband, and five-year-old daughter in the disaster. She is now trying to take care of her son who was left disabled by the earthquake.
She said she moved to the western city of Bursa soon after the earthquake, but the high rents forced her to return to Hatay, where she faces her traumas repeatedly day after day. She was in tears as she recalled how her daughter was alive under the wreckage for hours. She cried over and over for help but nobody came and she died while holding her mother’s hand.
Aydın couldn’t make her voice heard then. She has no hope that it will be heard today.
“It’s a miracle that we survive here, in these conditions. I wish it was me who died,” she said. Aydın is angry at her compatriots who believe life in Hatay has turned to normal. “Fortunately, we have neighbors. We met here, and became like family. But I’m always crying when I’m on my own. I cannot help but think of the old days. I miss them so much. I’m struggling so much.”
Disagreeing over government support
Gülay Ray, 46, lives in a tent in the Samandağ District alongside her family.
For two months after the earthquake they lived in a greenhouse alongside another 300 people.
The Ray family lost their house to the earthquake and spent the winter sleeping in coats. Their current clothes all came from donations. Ray’s husband insistently disrupted our conversation to say “everything is well, we have everything thanks to the government.”
Ray, on the other hand, insisted that nothing was well and life hadn’t turned to normal. This is when her husband threatened to beat her. Still, she didn’t submit and spoke: “We are always cold. We don’t even have wood to burn.”
Choosing to stay in Antakya
Many of the businesses that used to operate around the Antakya bus station arranged containers for themselves to sell humus, doner, kebabs and sweets here.
Bahadır Yücedağ, 44, started a sandwich business in Antakya, where he was born and bred, two weeks after the earthquake. I asked him about the problems of daily life there.
“What isn’t a problem?” he answered. “Life here is at zero. Our people are in terrible conditions. The artisans are in deep trouble. People who live in the containers try to get by with 3000 TL (less than 100 euros) of aid per month. Power cuts happen. Our drinking water is dirty.”
Yücedağ believes that Antakya is a forgotten city. “We don’t feel that, we’re living that. Antakya has been orphaned,” he said.
Yücedağ lost his mother, sister and nephews to the earthquake. He thought of moving away but changed his mind because he feared everyone would move away, leaving Antakya in the hands of strangers. A lot of the people we interviewed in Hatay were feeling that way. Yet, tens of thousands of earthquake victims were forced to migrate to other cities of Turkey.
The risk of asbestos is at maximum
Lawyer Ecevit Alkan is the chair of the Environment and City Commission of the Bar Association of Hatay and one of the people who preferred to stay in his hometown and fight the effects of the disaster. He said wreckage is being transported without following the rules — that means without being watered and then put in covered trucks —, and then it is being dumped in agricultural areas and by the water, elevating the risk of asbestos to the maximum.
The Istanbul Branch of the Environmental Engineers Chamber took samples around Hatay in September and found asbestos in 16 out of 45 of them. Alkan said this is another curse for the people who survived the earthquake.
He said the changes made to the urban renovation law on Nov. 7 will cause the people to lose their properties and this will cause even more hopelessness in the area. “Many people are unable to afford the buildings being erected on their properties,“ he said. People who are living in undamaged and lightly damaged buildings paid for repairs and improvements out of their own pockets, while those who would lose their land may not even be granted a compensation for their expropriated land, said Alkan.
Alkan added that the Interior Ministry of Turkey needs to give permission for the personnel of the responsible state bodies to be put on trial for all the loss of human life and property too. At the same time, he expects the trials would not start for a long time, which would lead to the loss of evidence and eventually to impunity.
