Two years on, survivors of Turkish earthquake still struggle with loss and hardship

People visit graves in a cemetery where some of the victims of the earthquake in Feb. 2023 are buried in Antakya, southern Turkiye, Tuesday, Feb. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Metin Yoksu, File)

ANKARA, Turkiye — Two years have passed since a devastating earthquake shattered Turkey’s southern region, but for Omer Aydin and many other of its survivors the memory and the suffering remain fresh.

While struggling with a third winter in the cold inside a shipping container-like temporary housing unit, the single father of three is grappling with a cost-of-living crisis that is affecting the whole country as well as still trying to heal the scars from the disaster.

The magnitude 7.8 earthquake on Feb. 6, 2023, and a second powerful tremor that came hours later, destroyed or damaged hundreds of thousands of buildings in 11 southern and southeastern Turkish provinces, leaving more than 53,000 people dead. Another 6,000 people were killed in the northern parts of neighboring Syria.

It was one of Turkey’s worst disasters.

Aydin, a 51-year-old electrician who survived along with his elderly mother and his children, said sounds from the earthquake still echo in his mind.

“The sounds of the homes crashing down, the sounds of the cries for help ... I still shake when they come to my mind,” Aydin told The Associated Press over the phone.

The house Aydin shared with his mother and children in the Mediterranean port city of Iskenderun — in the worst-hit province of Hatay — split into two, he said. The family were lucky to get out without injuries, he said, but ended up spending four days in the cold inside a makeshift tent he constructed with plastic sheets and pieces of wood.

Aydin now lives in a container home at a temporary housing settlement called a “container city” in Iskenderun but is struggling to make ends meet on a small state pension that he says barely covers anything.

He occasionally finds work as an electrician but jobs in Iskenderun are scarce, he says.

He is the sole provider for his family. His oldest son, who is 26, is receiving cancer treatment and needs to travel regularly to a hospital in the city of Adana, some 135 kilometres (84 miles) away, adding to the financial burden. His youngest child, a daughter, is at school while his middle son is also unemployed while waiting to start his military service.

Life in the container city is a daily struggle, and sanitary conditions can be poor, he says.

His family will qualify to receive one of the hundreds of thousands of government houses that are under construction, but Aydin is worried about furnishing it or paying the bills once they move in.

“I don’t even own a pin, what will I do once I move in?” he said.

On Thursday, special prayers seeking blessings for the dead were recited from mosques, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported. Survivors visited cemeteries to pay respects to their loved ones, leaving carnations on their graves and offering their condolences to fellow visitors.

Mourners held a minute of silence to remember the dead at 04:17 a.m. — the time the earthquake struck. Shouts of “can anyone hear me?” marked the ceremonies, echoing the cries of those who were trapped under the rubble two years ago.

In Kahramanmaras, the epicenter of the earthquake, mourners gathered at the site of a large residential complex where several buildings were destroyed, leaving 1,400 people dead.

Small scuffles broke out between police and mourners in Antakya, the provincial capital of Hatay, after officers set up barriers to prevent people marching to a main square. The barriers were eventually lifted, allowing mourners to place flowers on the surface of the Orontes River.

Attending a commemoration event in the city of Adiyaman, where more than 8,000 people died, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the government was aiming to deliver a total of 453,000 homes, shops and other work spaces by the end of 2025.

“Not one single citizen will be left without a home or without claiming their workplaces,” Erdogan said. He later presided over an event where some families were handed keys to their new homes.

Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc said 118 people have been sentenced so far to various prison terms for negligence, while more than 1,300 prosecution cases, filed for alleged negligence or violation of zoning laws, were in progress.

Jessie Thomson, the head of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in Turkey, said nearly half a million people remain in temporary container cities two years after the earthquake struck.

“Hundreds of thousands continue to face immense challenges securing sustainable incomes, with depression and despair rising,” Thomson said. “The road to recovery is long and arduous, demanding continued support and solidarity.”

Aydin told the AP that when he rests his head on a pillow, he prays that he won’t wake up to face another day.

“I swear, every day when I go to bed and put my head on the pillow, I pray to God to not wake me up in the morning,” he said.

Songul Erol, a 29-year-old mother of two girls aged seven and three, is slowly rebuilding her life in Samandag, another town in Hatay province, after spending months in tents and a container home.

With the help of funds provided by the Turkish Red Crescent to small businesses, she was able to rent a shop and reopen her business selling bait, nets, knives or other gear used by fishermen and hunters. She has turned a room at the back of the shop into a living space for herself and her daughters, whose severe allergies were exacerbated by the conditions in the tents and the container home.

Haunted by memory of buildings that tumbled in Samandag, she told the AP in a video call that she has only one dream: “That is to move to a one-story house that is not surrounded by apartment buildings.”

Suzan Fraser, The Associated Press