Turkey
The dead village: “Erdogan lives in the palace, we sit here”
Only rubble remains of a house in the small village of Ördekdede. photo
© Boris Roessler/dpa
Villages in Kahramanmaras were also leveled by the earthquakes. More than half of Ördekdede’s residents have been killed. It is best for the survivors to help themselves.
Villager Ismail Mikyaz built his own tomb. “My husband always said to me: ‘Don’t worry, the house is stable,'” says his wife Zeynep. But Ismail was slain in the house he built with his own hands 60 years ago in the small village of Ördekdede.
More than half of the villagers have been killed by the quake. When the stones fell on the couple’s marriage bed, he said goodbye: “My wife, let me die.”
Widow Zeynep now looks at the ruins of her house. She couldn’t save him. On the night of the earthquake, the 83-year-old rolls out of bed and pulls herself out of the rubble through a small opening until she is out in the open. Lying in the rain, she listens as her village collapses in on itself, screaming as the earth trembles beneath her with a magnitude of 7.7.
“Before we were around 70 people. 36 of them are dead now”
The village of Ördekdede is 80 kilometers from the city of Kahramanmaras, where thousands died in the rubble of apartment blocks. “Before, we were around 70 people. 36 of them are dead now,” says village head Sezai Tan. 115 of 120 houses were completely destroyed. “The five remaining are so damaged that you are not allowed to enter them.”
Kücük Hasan Barik survived the earthquake and looks out over the village from the heap that is now his house. “I am done with this world.” The words hiss out of his mouth. The earthquake shook him so much, he fell on the stairs inside the house and knocked out half his teeth. He doesn’t know where to go, there is no space and he has no material to repair his house. He spins on his own axis and explains where people have died all around him. Overall.
“Erdogan lives in his palace and we’re sitting here,” says Zeynep’s son Nusret. It was not until the seventh day of the quake that the Afad state civil protection agency brought a tent to his mother. State aid organizations were only there for a flying visit, together with state media. The spread “lies”. Most of the help that arrives comes from private individuals, he says, pointing to freshly baked minced meat cakes on the garden table in front of him. A man from the area is distributing them throughout the village. People from the village also pulled the father’s body out of the rubble. The emergency structure that arises in cities has not yet made it into the village.
“Do you have a grease pencil?”
A few kilometers away, in the village of Karacay, 94-year-old Meyrem Yasim is sitting on a plastic chair in front of an Afad tent at the edge of a field, gazing at the surrounding mountains and warming herself in the sunlight. At night, temperatures drop well below zero. The tent that she shares with other women is heated, but you still feel cold, she says and cries. Is something missing? “No, we have everything.” Later, the other women ask behind closed doors: “Do you have a grease pencil?” Her lips are cracked from the cold. “And panties?”
It could have been worse in Ördekdede, says a resident. Because in winter most of the residents go to the city because it gets bitterly cold in the village and there is often no gas for heating. She herself fled Kuwait to Syria in the early 1990s when the second Gulf War broke out. When war broke out in Syria, she fled from Aleppo to this village. “I’ve gotten used to it,” she says. The tears in her eyes make me doubt it.
She does not yet know what will happen next for Zeynep. Her children live in France and Germany. She never really wanted to leave Turkey and her life here. If she goes, then only for a limited time. She wants to come back here, to Ördekdede, her home, and back to Ismail, who is now buried a few meters away.