‘Have we no dignity left?’: the Turkish town forced to dig itself out from the rubble

Samandağ is a town that has been left to save itself, with those left alive working to save their friends and neighbours from under the rubble. They fear the quake has brought the end of their community.

Residents said that the central government in Ankara had long neglected #Hatay province, a fertile and verdant strip of land filled with olive groves and citrus trees bordered by Syria’s Idlib province on one side and the Mediterranean sea on the other.

The earthquake’s aftermath, they said, simply showed how little the government cared to preserve what’s left of the province and its diverse people – sects who have lived side by side for millennia among ancient #synagogues, #churches, #mosques and #antiquities. The province and its rich history have survived many earthquakes, including the Antioch earthquake which occurred in 115 AD and was estimated to be of similar force to the deadly quake that struck this week.

But those who were left in Samandağ said they feared the destruction wrought by the latest earthquake was a death knell for their community, scattering #Armenians, #Alawites, #Christians and Arabic-speaking #Turks across the country to Turkey’s metropolitan cities as they were unable to stay in what was left of the town.

When the first earthquake struck in the early hours of the morning, those who found themselves alive immediately began to try and save their neighbours trapped under the rubble. The owner of a local hardware shop, Lami Doğru, pulled tools out from under his destroyed store, and brandishing a vice grip and a hammer set to work.

“I started over there,” he said, pointing to his nephew’s house past a heap of broken concrete with pipes and a lamppost strewn next to air-conditioning units, chairs and twisted wrought-iron grating piled on top of the broken pieces. “I managed to save three people, although one of them was my cousin, who we lost.”

Doğru attempted to be hopeful about Samandağ’s future and that the government would help rebuild it. “It will take a decade to get things back to how they were, if the state helps,” he said. “If not, maybe it could take up to 15 years. It was really a beautiful town.”

In the days since the earthquakes, many of those who survived have left Samandağ, abandoning the rubble of their homes for bigger cities.

Barış and his parents are debating whether they will remain. “When we were waiting in line at the morgue, the first question they asked us was: ‘What are you going to do after you bury your dead? Are you leaving?’” he said.

Days after recovering his grandparent’s bodies, transporting them to the morgue themselves in makeshift orange body bags as there was no one to help them, they returned to begin preparations to bury them. “When we searched the morgue for my grandparents, I found Gönül Sakallı and her daughter laying next to each other in their body bags,” said Barış.

“We were opening the bags to identify people and we suddenly found them. The thought suddenly struck me that a huge part of my childhood in our neighbourhood has been erased.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/11/turkey-syria-earthquake-samandag-left-to-save-itself?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other