Quake-stricken provinces rally for recovery

HATAY

In the wake of the devastating earthquakes centered in Kahramanmaraş, volunteers and inhabitants of affected provinces strive to mend both the emotional and tangible wounds inflicted by the deadly tremors.

In Hatay, the province hit the hardest by the earthquakes, illustrator Çağla Köseoğlu, breathes life back into the city by drawing sunflower pictures on the destroyed buildings to "make room for hope."

"I thought of the photograph of sunflowers taken in Maraş and painted it on the wall of a house that was going to be demolished. A little girl asked me if I could do it on her container too. The fact that the little girl was happy when I made the drawing made me happy too, and that's how I made the decision. My aim was to give people hope and emphasize that there is life among the rubble," Köseoğlu said.

"The house where I was born has collapsed with many people buried under it. In villages full of olive groves, unregulated buildings became the graves of our loved ones. There was once life here and the people who lived here were sunflowers. For me, this is a debt of loyalty and a remembrance. There is life that will flourish here again. We have hope," she added while calling for accountability of those who constructed the buildings as well as those who allowed them to be built.

On the other hand, hundreds of volunteers who flocked to Hatay from all over Türkiye with the call of Gastronomy Nobel Chef Ebru Baybara Demir helped citrus fruit farmers collect tangerines and oranges left on the branches due to weather, harvest costs, and shortage of workers.

In Malatya, nearly 4,000 buildings collapsed and 36,000 were heavily damaged, including the historical bazaar. The bazaar, once the center of economic and social life, has been demolished.

Memet Yaylacı, who worked as a tea seller in the bazaar for years, now sells tea to construction workers from a dusty tent. "We used to be able to support three to four families with our stall, but now we can barely support one," shopkeeper Resül Gürbüz shared.