Bouquets of red flowers, a carpet of candles and tears rolling down cheeks. Three years after the tragedy, people’s pain was still acute. Around the vigil, held in memory of the victims of the February 6, 2023, earthquake, the city of Kahramanmaras was in mourning. Several hundred people had gathered there, standing in the cold night air, around an altar set up by a handful of survivors who escaped the Said-Bey apartment complex, one of 7,500 structures to have been destroyed that day in Kahramanmaras, an industrious and conservative city in southern Turkey.
The epicenter of the earthquake is located about 20 kilometers away. According to official figures, nearly 13,000 deaths were recorded in Kahramanmaras and its surrounding areas, out of the 54,000 officially tallied across the 11 provinces affected by the earthquake. Mass graves were dug in the city to bury more than 5,000 bodies. A city official suggested that the real number might have been twice as high. Three-quarters of the city’s buildings were damaged or destroyed. Since then, nearly 58,000 housing units have been built, according to figures from the president’s office in Ankara. More than 430,000 have been constructed throughout the affected region.
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