Shaken to the core: Survivors of Turkish earthquake still struggling after 2 years

Ankara: Two years have passed since a devastating earthquake shattered Turkiye’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 7.8-magnitude earthquake on February 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 neighbouring northern Syria.

It was one of Turkiye’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 by telephone.

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 km away, adding to the financial burden.