In Türkiye, two years after the earthquake, a jungle of cranes on the ruins of Antioch

“That fear is still there,” says the 34-year-old. Her house in Antioch, the ancient name for Antakya in southeastern Turkey, collapsed, killing her entire family on the night of the 7,8-magnitude earthquake that devastated the south of the country on February 6, 2023.

More than 53.700 people have lost their lives in Türkiye and at least 6.000 in neighbouring Syria.

"They woke up and opened my door. At the same moment, the building collapsed. I was in my bed, but they were buried in the corridor and died within minutes," said Ms. Genc, ​​who works for an association helping Syrian refugee children.

She herself was trapped under the rubble, her legs crushed and burned by boiling water flowing from a broken radiator. Help arrived 36 hours later.

"It was not the earthquake but the collapse of our house that took my family away. I am angry with those who built it," she says.

The earthquake and its multiple aftershocks devastated an area spanning ten Turkish provinces, injuring 107.000 people.

According to figures from Turkey's disaster management agency AFAD, 39.000 buildings were razed and 200.000 others were seriously damaged. Nearly two million people were left homeless.

The destruction particularly hit the province of Hatay, which borders Syria and is home to the city of Antakya: 90% of the buildings were destroyed and more than 20.000 residents died.

Crane Jungle

Hundreds of tons of rubble have been removed, but parts of Antioch's historic center still resemble a war zone. The rest is a vast construction site, cluttered with a jungle of cranes and drowned in a cloud of suffocating dust.

"It's a very long wait," sighs Atilla Cicekci, 57, standing in the family camp built around a 21-square-metre shipping container.

The father of three applied for a Toki social apartment, built by the state housing agency and allocated by lottery. But he's still waiting.

"All these new constructions give us hope, they work quickly," he comforts himself.

Toki's architect, Deniz Eskiocak, is overseeing the construction of 482 apartments and 24 commercial premises that are due to be completed within a year. Her 324 employees are working around the clock to deliver them on time, she says.

"I have to work quickly while ensuring that procedures are followed, that it is safe. We poured a lot of concrete at 2 or 3 in the morning," she explained to AFP on this gigantic construction site.

On January 26, the Ministry of Urban Planning announced that 201.580 homes and shops had been returned in the earthquake zone and promised a total of 453.000 by the end of 2025.

Construction under supervision

Earthquake survivors are monitoring the progress of the work: at the end of October, 670.000 were still living in containers, according to AFAD figures.

"The hardest part is stopping them from coming to the construction sites, it's dangerous. But they want to see and make sure that everything is done properly," explains Ms. Eskiocak.

Sema Genc is one of them.

After five months in hospital and seven operations, she waited in a shipping container before winning her home in a lottery and moving in November to Gulderen, on a formerly empty hill north of Antakya – considered more stable than the city.

"We saw with our own eyes the concrete and the amount of steel used to build it, and how the foundations were properly laid," she says in her fourth-floor apartment.

"Without the earthquake, no one would have paid so much attention to construction. But now everyone is wondering if we will be safe."

Earthquake resistant?

The earthquake's devastation has exposed the greed and corruption of developers and bureaucrats who approved risky projects on unsuitable land and built with cheap materials, experts said.

For Mustafa Arslan, Toki's chief engineer in Hatay, seeing that the existing Toki buildings withstood the tremors increased public confidence.

"From the diameter of the rebars to the quality of the concrete used, everything is inspected," he says. "If there is another earthquake, we are confident that these houses will resist."

A few weeks after Mrs. Genc moved in, another 4,8 magnitude earthquake struck before dawn, causing no damage.

"This place gives me confidence," she smiles, banging her fist on the walls. "I feel really safe here."