A boy’s arduous steps on prosthetic legs after Turkey’s earthquake
Al Jazeera
When a devastating earthquake struck Turkey in the early hours of February 6, 2023, the five-storey building in Hatay where 13-year-old Mehmet Koc lived, collapsed, burying him in rubble and killing his older brother Emre, 14, and his mother Didem.
Mehmet survived. But it took 76 hours before rescuers could pull him from the mound of concrete and twisted metal that remained of his home. Later in hospital, doctors determined that his legs were so badly crushed and injured, that both needed to be amputated just below the hip.
Hearing of the earthquake in London where he lived and worked, Mehmet’s father, Hasan, caught the next available flight to Turkey and travelled to Hatay, in the southeast, desperate for news of his family.
The 58-year-old encountered a scene of utter destruction. While he learned his wife and elder son had not survived, Mehmet was alive but trapped. He stood vigil amid the rubble with other relatives.
Hasan could not speak to his son himself, but passed messages to a teenage neighbour, Hayrettin, trapped closer to the surface, whose words could reach Mehmet, and who talked to him to keep him awake as rescuers came closer.
