Six months after record-breaking earthquakes devastated southern Turkey and northern Syria, the historic city of Antakya is a rolling landscape of cracked high-rises, tent cities and piles of debris.
The freezing temperatures of the earthquake’s immediate aftermath have been replaced by dust and 95-degree-Fahrenheit days.
Despite the Turkish government’s promise to rebuild affected areas within a year, nearly everyone in the city continues to live in tents and converted shipping containers — set up in front of gardens, olive orchards and open fields.
Donated tents, designed for the winter cold, soak up the heat of the sun. But skin infections, borne by flies, are common. Organized settlements of container homes are set up on hot concrete, surrounded by barbed wire, and are reliant on regular shipments of drinking water.
Of the more than 50,000 deaths reported in Turkey, half occurred in Hatay, the country’s southernmost province. Grief pervades almost every corner of the province but, slowly, the residents who remain are carving out a life amid the rubble.
Here is a photo essay by The World’s Durrie Bouscaren.
Translations by Duygu Yeral.
Related: Life returns to Antakya, a city nearly leveled by earthquakes in southern Turkey
The story you just read is available to read for free because thousands of listeners and readers like you generously support our nonprofit newsroom. Every day, the reporters and producers at The World are hard at work bringing you human-centered news from across the globe. But we can’t do it without you: We need your support to ensure we can continue this work for another year.
When you make a gift of $10 or more a month, we’ll invite you to a virtual behind-the-scenes tour of our newsroom to thank you for being with The World.