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Three weeks after the violent earthquake that shook southern Turkey and neighboring Syria, more than two million people have left the affected area. Some cities, such as Antioquia, in the Hatay region, one of the most affected provinces, have been left empty: their inhabitants have fled to cities further north.
By Manon Chapelan, special envoy to Antioquia
Staring into space, sweaty, Ahmed pulls out the furniture from his old apartment one by one. An old clock, a cracked fish tank, a broken bookshelf, he wants to recover everything before leaving the city for good. “We try to salvage what we can,” he tells RFI. “Most of the furniture and objects are damaged, if not completely broken, because all the walls of the apartment collapsed in the earthquake. But we keep rescuing them, because at the moment we don’t have a way to buy furniture.”
Two streets away, the same scene, the same concern. You have to get in and out of the apartment as soon as possible so as not to be in danger during aftershocks. Ali and her mother, Sürme, only took time to take a few photos. “My mother had many students,” she recalls. “We don’t know how many of those in this photo are alive today. We fled the city the first night after the earthquake, and this is the first time we’ve been back. It’s terribly sad. We saw that some buildings had collapsed when we left the city, but we knew there were so many. We grew up here, all our memories are on this street. I hope to see this city alive again, to be able to go back to the restaurants, to the museums. As we are alive, we have to go back and revive this city.”
Relive Antioquia, a dead city. The inhabitants have left, the streets are empty and only destroyed buildings and bulldozers remain. And there are soldiers on every corner, watching the comings and goings of the people. “You want to come in, is that it? First I have to ask my commander, I have no choice, then you can go in, but only if you have authorization,” says one of them.
“There are dead people in the buildings, but they are no longer looking for them”
In the middle of the ruins, some inhabitants have stayed. Some for fear of looting, others because they could not pay for gasoline to leave. At Mert’s, eight people live in a small tent in the garden. “Of course, there are people who have fled, those who are rich. They could have gone to Antalya, Izmir or Ankara. They have even bought a house there. But we have no money, so we are stuck here,” he laments.
To help these few families, volunteers have settled between two destroyed buildings. Tulug arrived the day after the earthquake. He regrets that the government is more concerned with the demolition of the city than with the relocation of its inhabitants: “The government is quick to forget life. They think this place is a great work. They did not send the search teams, but they did demolition machines. There are dead people in the buildings, but they are no longer looking for them.”
According to Serpil Kemalbyan, an MP from the pro-Kurdish opposition party HDP, residents regret the lack of transparency about the reconstruction. “They are afraid, because the government may make decisions against them,” he says. “For example, destroy their building or force them to move to distant towns. They want to keep their home, their culture, their neighbors. They don’t want to change their life completely.” .
According to the Turkish Presidency, at least 2 million people have left the affected areas on their own in the last three weeks. Around 1.5 million have been left homeless, most remain in tents.