One year after earthquake, remains of ancient Antioch unrecognisable

Antakya earthquake survivors struggle to cope with the devastation, as the city transforms into a ghost town.

Mevlude Aydin cannot bring herself to visit the graves of her daughter and husband or the dozen other relatives she lost in Turkiye’s catastrophic earthquake one year ago.

The trauma of seeing her ancient home city of Antakya turned into unrecognisable ruins is too much for the 41-year-old to bear.

“Our Hatay is gone. Completely gone,” Ms. Aydin said at one of the depressingly cramped container homes the government has built for survivors across the devastated Hatay province of which Antakya is the capital.

The February 6, 2023, disaster killed more than 50,000 people and erased swathes of entire cities across Turkiye’s southeast in the middle of the night.

No place was affected more than Antakya — a mountain-rimmed cradle of Muslim and Christian civilisations known throughout history as Antioch. 90% of its buildings were lost and more than 20,000 people died in the city and its surrounding province.

Antakya’s survivors have been left to deal with the shock in fenced-off camps comprised of hundreds of identical homes that look like shipping containers.

Families have access to running water and power that the government offers for free. But grim-faced police guarding their entrances give these miniature metal cities the air of prison camps.