Flowers, tears, tree planting in Adiyaman to remember Turkey’s earthquake

On the first anniversary of the quake that killed more than 50,000 people, Adiyaman came together to remember.

Adiyaman, Turkiye – The clock tower standing above the rubble and debris, frozen in time with its watch hands stopped at 4:17am, had become a symbol of Adiyaman’s destruction. But a year later, it is finally ticking again as usual.

On the first anniversary of a double-fold earthquake that killed more than 50,000 people and left three million people displaced in Syria and Turkey, hundreds have gathered beneath Adiyaman’s clock tower – a point of reference for the city – just a few minutes before 4am.

Survivors left flowers and observed a few moments of silence to mourn Adiyaman’s 8,387 victims, making it the third most affected province in Turkey after Hatay and Kahramanmaras.

After an early morning spent sitting around fires warming up this cold day and recalling their traumatic memories from last year, at 7am attendees headed together to plant 100 trees, a symbol of rebirth after so much death and destruction. “We thought it was important to honour our dead, but also celebrate all those who’ve given their helping hands over the past year,” says Berfin Kilic, a native of Sanliurfa, another province of the earthquake zone.

Kilic decided to move to Adiyaman a year ago to help. As her city was spared major destruction, unlike elsewhere in the region, she started volunteering for Dayanisma Insanlari, a civil society organisation coordinating humanitarian aid cooperation in the disaster area, including food distribution to survivors in tented settlements.