The Press in Turkey | “There is no more hope here”

Residents of the town of Osmaniye, some 100 km from the epicenter in southern Turkey, still find it hard to believe that their town was all but destroyed. A nightmare that they try to forget as best they can.

“I don’t have a home anymore. Yet I was born there, my bedroom was my secure space, but we have nothing left,” laments Merve Yavuz, still dressed in the pajamas she wore when she fled her apartment in disaster with her family. The building did not collapse, but it is badly damaged. Going back there is impossible.

She says that her mother, paralyzed when the first shock was felt, could hardly move. She took a little money and some food, and descended with her parents the nine floors, in extremis. ” I was scared. I was waiting for my death,” said 20-year-old Merve Yavuz in tears.

The trauma is palpable for this family which has lost many loved ones. Since Monday, Merve Yavuz says she sometimes forgets her first name and does not know how she still manages to stand up; her father has stopped talking and her mother keeps crying.

Faced with the paralysis of the city of Osmaniye, Merve Yavuz and her mother will leave their hometown on Friday to temporarily join relatives in Istanbul. “There is no more hope here. They will surely destroy half of the buildings in this city, because there is a lot of damage. We can’t live here anymore. They are now connecting with the hope of building a new life in a new home, even if they don’t yet know where or how.

Devastation

There are plenty of testimonials like this. Almost on every street corner in Osmaniye, buildings have been reduced to rubble. Others, very often marked by large cracks on the facades, have been abandoned in a hurry by the residents, who prefer to sleep outside, for fear of collapses. In a park, hundreds of tents have been set up for survivors and residents who sleep there on the ground. In a station, others have transformed train carriages into shelters.

Sedef and her mother Feyza want to show what’s left of a shoe store in town, where they used to go. Nothing remains except rubble and pairs of shoes among the rubble.

Dust is everywhere. Rubble and devastation too. The city, which had nearly 200,000 inhabitants before the earthquake, now looks like a ghost town. All the buildings are empty, only a few small convenience stores and cafes are still functioning. Residents gather at the end of their street or in front of what remains of their house, light fires with wood and try to comfort each other. Even when they have lost everything, they are ready to offer what is left of their food or water to anyone in need.

The smell of death

While strolling in the almost deserted streets of the city, it is not uncommon to come across people in tears. Odors sometimes emerge, resembling that of death. As in other cities in Turkey, the search to find survivors under the rubble is still continuing, even if hopes are now very slim.

Sadik can no longer wait in front of the completely destroyed building where he spent his childhood and where his 53-year-old mother, who lived on the fifth floor, is missing. Arrived in disaster from Kosovo on Monday, he did not leave the street where the search continues. His family members come to support him during the day, and at night he sleeps in a car next to what remains of the building.

“I am waiting for my mother to be found. After she dies, we’ll do a ceremony for her, but of course I hope she’s still alive. But I think the odds are now 1%,” he says with tears in his eyes, as his cousin hugs him in support.

The shock is perhaps what comes back the most after the emotion. Many residents of Osmaniye say they were surprised by the intensity of the quake, unheard of, according to some. “I asked my father and my grandfather, a power like that, we have never seen that,” Sadik said. He, like many others, now fears future tremors of the same intensity.