‘Moving is torment’: Life for amputees after Turkey earthquakes
Al Jazeera
Around 70,000 people in Turkey are believed to have a disability caused by injuries in last year’s earthquakes.
Adiyaman, Turkey – When Adile Yetkin went to register her child at school recently, she eyed the three steps she would have to climb to enter the building anxiously. Her prosthetic leg had never worked right, tormenting her with its rigidity and dead weight.
Yetkin hauled herself up the first step, then the second but on the third, the prosthesis gave way, becoming detached and leaving her stranded until someone could come and help her.
“Now I’m afraid to go anywhere in case it happens again, and I always need someone with me,” she told Al Jazeera.
The 41-year-old now mostly confines herself to the two-roomed prefabricated container she shares with her husband and three remaining children in the southeast Turkish city of Adiyaman. One year ago, her eldest son was killed in the devastating earthquake that also destroyed her home and took one leg each from her and her husband.
More than 50,000 people are believed to have died in southern Turkey as a result of the magnitude 7.8 and 7.5 earthquakes on February 6, 2023. The death toll in Adiyaman – population 300,000 – was more than 8,000 while about 17,500 more were injured.
