The elderly, women and disabled in Pazarcık (Bazarcix), the epicentre of Turkey’s 6 February double earthquake, spoke to Mezopotamya Agency on how they still lack basic amenities 17 days after the deadly disaster.
Many report a lack of access to even basic sanitation and bathrooms, while the pro-government media in the country have started to run stories on how life is “getting back to normal” in the affected area.
A Haber, a news channel owned by a construction conglomerate that is closely allied with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, came under fire earlier in the week for running videos from Adıyaman (Semsur)’s Kahta district, saying shops were open and life was back to normal, while the city and many of its districts and villages continue to suffer heavy losses and a lack of organisation in the aftermath.
“They say life is back to normal. Let them come here and feel the dead of winter to their bones, then we see if they think it’s normal,” scoffed Cuma Talan, a resident of Pazarcık.
The Talan family has three disabled children who cannot live in a tent. “So we took them to a village for now. We urgently need container towns, to bide us over until our houses are reconstructed,” father Cuma said.
“My house was destroyed. Nobody came to help us, even though I am a civil servant,” İbrahim Alpdoğan, a worker at the Kahramanmaraş court house, told Mezopotamya. Alpdoğan and his wife moved into an old shack they had at a nearby village as they cannot stay in their Pazarcık home.
“They said it had low-level damage, but all the walls have exploded,” Alpdoğan said. “If they let us, we will rebuild. If they don’t, that’s it. We are miserable here. I do not expect any help from the state.”
Another woman, an asthma patient, said her home was deemed to be low-risk. “All the neighbours will be torn down, but my home is said to have little damage,” the woman said. She has put up a makeshift shed by her building. “I cannot stay in the tent cities because of the smoke from coal. They haven’t given me a tent to set up here, so I stay in this,” she said.
Fatma Suluyaylak, another resident of the district, was not given a tent because she lived alone. “Sometimes I stay in my neighbours’ tents. But in the morning I have to go home, even though it is all dilapidated.”
Women were boiling water in giant pots in front of a group of tents, to wash their children with, as they told Mezopotamya. “We are miserable, wretched. We are in no condition to do anything,” Elif İnce, who has one prosthetic leg, told the reporters.
“We stay in a tent now, but it will be better if there are containers set up in Çaplıtepe. When there is an earthquake, we are very afraid, it is difficult,” her son Ali İnce said.
Mamo Saban managed to rescue his daughter from the rubble. “But she later died of the cold,” he said. “She had a chronic condition. Due to the situation and the cold she had an internal haemorrhage. Me and my wife are alone now. [My wife] cannot get up. There is no toilet to begin with, but even if there was one, she couldn’t move to go use it.”
Ayşe Perçin (94) is bedbound and cannot stay in a tent, daughter Zeynep Sümer said. They stay inside a building, despite the risk. “But what can we do?” Sümer asked. “We cannot even take her to the bathroom. We wait on her night and day. We can’t leave her and go to a tent.”
Access to clean water has been a persistent problem in the area. “A tanker brought in water, but we couldn’t get any because the neighbourhood decided to prioritise those who had animals,” Elda Edik said. “My children have lice now. And we don’t have any drinking water.”
The aid distribution centres refuse to provide family packs, and no aid worker is willing to bring the materials to families in the neighbourhoods, Edik continued. “They tell us we can take one. I have small children, what shall I do?”
The woman’s husband, a factory worker, was called back to work. “I am afraid for him but I told him to go, so we wouldn’t have to deal with unemployment on top of everything,” she said.
Another resident, an elderly man named Yusuf Madenkuyu, was looking for the disaster management authority AFAD’s mobile units. “They put up a sticker saying they had come and I wasn’t home. They said they could not do damage assessment because the house was locked,” he said.
“We cannot know when they’ll come. Officials said I should roam the streets to find them, or put in a complaint when the system is back online in 10 days. I live alone. How can I do that?” Madenkuyu said.
“The most important thing is to resolve the women’s and children’s issues,” Cuma Perçin, an engineer, said. “We adults will manage, but children wake up scared.”
Perçin’s mother is also bedbound. “We cannot even take her to the bathroom. We hold a bucket up for her. It is rough for her.”
