Turkey one year after the earthquake | DW Documentary
Turkey was hit by a major earthquake a year ago, hundreds of thousands were made homeless. The reconstruction process is sluggish.
Ruined cities – and disappointed hopes. A year after devastating earthquakes in southeastern Turkey, hundreds of thousands of people in the region are still holding out in temporary shelters. President Erdoğan had promised rapid reconstruction, but this is still a long time coming.
Engin Aşkar: “We are hoping to resurrect this place, but sometimes I think we’re just fooling ourselves.”
Many earthquake survivors are haunted by trauma and fears, especially children. They long for a little comfort and normality – as they struggle to rebuild their lives.
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Ruined cities and disappointed hopes a year after devastating earthquakes in southeast and turkey hundreds of thousands of people in the region are still holding out in temporary shelters president Adan had promised rapid reconstruction but this is still a long time coming we’re hoping to resurrect this place but sometimes I think we’re just
Fooling ourselves many Earth Quake survivors are haunted by trauma and fears especially children they long for a little comfort and normality as they struggle to rebuild their [Applause] lives the southern Turkish city of anakia once home to to hundreds of thousands of people now looks like a patchwork of ruins and empty lots a year after it was battered by powerful earthquakes excavators are still working to remove the debris many neighborhoods are now virtually deserted
Uninhabitable on the outskirts of their destroyed Hometown enin ashkar tries to create a sense of normality for his daughter Cavin like so many here affected by the Quakes they live in a container shelter now a Drey metal box funded by the government with cen’s Mom seal and her baby brother
Ali let’s do some ballet but be careful in such cramed quarters six-year-old Cavin has hardly any room to play and the family struggling with many other problems SE aska tells us you can’t wash yourself when you want there are many water outages sometimes I wake my child up at
2: in the morning to wash her because that’s when we have water the city’s infrastructure is broken the authorities can’t get things under control everything has become so complicated and seal are both teachers they used to have a house they tell us regular incomes plans for the future the
Family felt safe and secure but all that suddenly changed in the early hours of February 6th 2023 it was very dark everywhere I looked around and the wall was cracking things were falling in every direction I thought I was having a night it wasn’t a nightmare but a 7.8
Magnitude Quake followed by another massive Tremor only hours later causing unprecedented Devastation in Southeastern turkey some 300,000 buildings collapsed or were heavily damaged across 11 provinces experts blame shy construction and LAX and forcement of safety codes for the scale of the disaster within seconds hommes turned into death Trips that was the scariest time of my entire life those seconds felt like weeks I remember trying to protect my daughter so nothing would happen to her and she kept telling her mom it’s okay it’s going to be okay Daddy will save us he is with us don’t
Cry the family survived but more than 53,000 people didn’t these graves in Ania are a monument to the pain and loss abdurahman Dash cholu Mourns his brother and his mother he himself was trapped under the rubble for more than a day he tells us when I managed to get out after more
Than 30 hours it looked like the apocalypse had happened no one knew what to do everybody had lost someone and the state wasn’t there for us there was no help a year later hundreds of thousands in The Afflicted region are still holding out in container blocks or other temporary shelters defying winter
Temperatures and Rain waiting for their cities to recover like melik Dash kapan who invites us into her improvised kitchen she lives here with her husband and two children I can’t get used to this I had a big house I had everything and now I don’t know what will happen What will
Become of my kids with all the rain and the cold I sometimes tell myself God I wish we had died too as a family shortly after the Quakes and facing national election President Reb T uan made bold promises he said half the disaster Zone would be rebuilt within just one
Year our goal in the first phase is to complete 319,000 housing units within a year and hand them over to their owners construction sites like this one are now dotting the earthquake hit region but even in January 2024 progress is going much slower than originally promised by the president here on the
Outskirts of anakia Mustafa asan and his team from the state housing agency Toki are racing to get the first few thousand Apartments ready the biggest problem right now is the rain it’s been raining very heavily in the region but we are working non-stop we want to make sure our
Earthquake victims can move in as soon as possible experts say it’s not just the weather that’s slowing down efforts but also Rising construction costs and chronic economic uncertainty in Turkey it might take 10 years or more to rebuild cities like anakia urban planner sanot estimates at the moment they are only
Concentrating on housing construction there is no serious investment in tourism the service sector or in agriculture but to bring back the 300 400,000 people who were driven out we have to rebuild this city economically as well and the urban planner warns against repeating past mistakes many homes collapsed because safety codes had been
Ignored he says by Builders and public officials responsible for greenlighting building projects we’ve not only experienced the disaster of the century here but also the negligence of the century if the central and local authorities had done something sooner about the poor stock of buildings and if there had been more
Serious inspections we would not have lost so many lives in this city look this used to be our house three floors we always park the car over there ashar and his daughter Cavin show us what’s left of their old home an empty area and a few piles of rubble it
Still feels very much unreal for 6-year-old Cavin I used to play in our garden a lot with my cousins but after the earthquakes there’s nothing left and as much as enin wants to believe in the government’s many promises it’s difficult for him to see a new beginning my biggest dream now is to
Have a solid roof over our heads again but it looks like it will take a long time we often tell each other that we will resurrect this place but every time we say that I feel like we’re just fooling ourselves anakia is a city struggling to
Get back on its feet many shop owners are now selling from containers offering everything from mobile phones to clothing and sweets but the economy he is on its knees most of the former customers are either dead or displaced we’re facing many difficulties everything is expensive there’s no work that’s why we’re
Struggling we decided to do something on our own to make ends meet life has to go on we hope that our city will soon be back on its feet they say everything will get better but I I think it’ll take 10 or 15 years to rebuild this
Place I am a mother of four children I’m fighting for them we have to hold on somehow at least we are still alive that means there is hope and that hope is something enin doesn’t want to give up either today will be so much fun to help his six-year-old daughter
Cavin with her fears and Trauma after the Quakes he takes her to her favorite [Applause] place follow me three four five F sat’s ballet school some of the ballerinas here have been orphaned by the disaster teacher Fatma knows what the children are going through she herself lost relatives and friends in the rubble most of the children didn’t smile they were constantly distracted they
Were so scared that they didn’t want to leave their families but slowly we helped them overcome their fears we did it with art we did it with love we did it by working together we just want them to have a bit of their old lives the school building with stod the
Quakes relatively unharmed Fatma first used it as an emergency shelter and started offering classes again a few months [Applause] ago for there to be life in a city there must first be people and these people should come together to achieve something of course we also need the government
Support we have all been grieving for a year now but at the same time we are trying to get back up and stay strong and the dance lessons are helping the parents too it feels like a break for us it helps us a lot we can finally take a
Deep breath and forget all our troubles for a Dancing having fun and forgetting the nightmare of the Quakes for Cen and the other children these are the happiest moments a small break from The Strange New Life in their ruined City
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Video “Turkey one year after the earthquake | DW Documentary” was uploaded on 03/04/2024 by DW Documentary Youtube channel.