One year in earthquake-ravaged Antakya

Antakya is one of the most special cities in Turkey. Many civilizations found life and left their mark in Antakya throughout history. For this reason, it has been a home to many beliefs and civilizations such as Jews, Christians, Muslims, Arabs, Turks and Kurds. Everyone in the city used to talk about the destruction seven times. I never imagined that I would witness the eighth.
  On the night of February 6, this city was leveled to the ground. Thousands of people were trapped under the rubble and lost their lives, thousands more were injured. Hundreds are still missing.
 Antakya, a city that smelled of oranges, is buried and dead. I went to another city for a very short time after the earthquake. Meanwhile, for 11 months I have been reporting on earthquake, the city, people and the environment in Antakya. I try to be the voice of Antakya.
 One year has passed since this great disaster. The first months were spent on the one hand trying to hold on to life with the hope that 'we will not leave, and even if we leave, we will return', and on the other hand searching for tents and trying to reach the basic needs of life. When you are surrounded by people, when you are in an intense tempo, you cannot fully realize what you are going through. After the general elections in May 2023, we more or less predicted that there would be a withdrawal, but I didn't think it would happen so fast. The elections are over, support has decreased, people have left. After the earthquake, what hurt the people of Antakya the most was this feeling of being discarded.
    It was a difficult year in summer and winter. Almost all of the rubble remained throughout the summer. Summer was one of the most desolate times in the city. Living in 40-degree temperatures in containers and tents was enormously difficult. During this period when access to drinking water was limited, sometimes there were queues waiting for hours for four 5-liter bottles of water. Many of us, including me, developed wounds on our bodies due to the unhygienic conditions in the tents and containers. There were also many cases of scabies. In the first week of school, 80 students in a middle school in Ovakent neighborhood had scabies. The reason was the conditions of the tents where they lived crowded with their families and the lack of water for personal hygiene.
 At the end of a year, not much has changed. There are still buildings waiting to be demolished, there are still thousands of people who have to live in containers and tents, and these people continue to wake up every day with the uncertainty of 'what will happen to us'.

 An important issue that has been talked about since the very beginning of the earthquake is the change in the demographic structure. Although the government says that the whole of Antakya will be built with demographics in mind, including the construction of houses and bazars, people have no hope or confidence in this.
 I would like to say this about demography. Just as the skyline of Istanbul is Fatih, which we call the Historic Peninsula, the skyline of Antakya is Affan with its historic mosque, church and synagogue. When the church is being built, if there is no George the Tailor's shop or Barbara's house next to it, we cannot call it Antakya and this would be a demographic change. A year has passed and no restoration or reconstruction work has started in historic Antakya, including churches and mosques. There is no information on what the next process will be. In the last month, two organs from the church that remained intact and the door of the Affan Mosque were knocked on. It is impossible to understand why there is no lighting or police station in the most visited area of Antakya even after the earthquake.
    People, who spent a year in tents and containers, now want to settle in their homes and normalize. At 4.17 a.m. on the night that would connect February 5 to February 6, life stopped again in Antakya. Antakya residents entered one year after the earthquake into the streets. Some marched silently with torches, some with the slogan 'where were you until now', some just crying.
On February 6, Antakya was very crowded. Journalists from Istanbul, people from NGOs and civil society organizations were all here; but on February 7, Antakya was once again alone with its fate ...