Should I stay or should I go? The dilemmas of the reconstruction of the eight times destroyed Antioch

“Come, come, do you want to see an archaeological remains?” asks a neighbor in the devastated center of Antioch with a mysterious air.

After crossing a lot covered in rubble, the man points out a place protected by tapes: in the gap left by one of the demolished buildings, worn marble steps lead to a half-buried stone arch.

Beyond, on the neighboring plot, appears what could well be an old vault.

It is as if last year's earthquake had exposed the bowels of the ancient city.

“Earthquakes have destroyed Antioch seven times.

“This is the eighth,” he says, using a phrase repeated by many of the residents who have stayed there after the devastation caused by the earthquake.

A phrase to give yourself some hope in the face of the slow progress in reconstruction.

The question is whether, as on previous occasions, the city founded by one of Alexander the Great's commanders, Seleucus I Nicator, will be able to rise from its ashes;

that where - according to the Bible - “for the first time they called

the disciples” of Jesus

Christians and where Saint Peter and Saint Paul preached;

which was the third largest population of the Roman Empire and seat of one of the Crusader kingdoms;

the one that faced France, Turkey and Syria in the League of Nations and was the capital of the short-lived Republic of Hatay ( Indiana Jones

fans

will recognize it).

The two earthquakes of magnitude 7.5 and 7.8 that shook southern Turkey and northern Syria on February 6, 2023, plus another of 6.4 two weeks later, destroyed or made uninhabitable some 250,000 homes in the Hatay province.

“Many of those who have money have left, to other provinces or abroad,” explains the president of the provincial College of Civil Engineering, Inal Büyükasik.

The results of the census from the end of last year indicate that the municipality of Antioquía has lost almost 100,000 of its 400,000 inhabitants.

One of the mosques of Antioch in ruins a year after the earthquake that shook southern Turkey and northern SyriaAndrés Mourenza

Hatay is known as one of the most cosmopolitan provinces in Turkey: Turks, Arabs, Kurds and Armenians;

Sunni and Alawite Muslims, Christians of various churches and Jews.

From this cultural wealth, from its exquisite gastronomic offer, from its liberal and tolerant environment, Antioquia had become a magnet for local and foreign tourism.

“This used to be packed with people, now there is nothing.

A year has passed and we continue as if the earthquake had happened yesterday.

We won't recover in ten years,” complains Nihat, who lives on some mattresses in the back room of her modest kebab restaurant.

The building remains standing, with some floors slightly damaged by the neighboring building, which fell on it.

In front, several plots of land full of rubble and ruins are spread out.

It is difficult to recognize in them the bustling center of Antioch, with its bars and cafes, its historical buildings, its temples.

All that rich past is at risk of disappearing.

Only the entrance steps remain of the nearby Protestant church;

of the orthodox just a few walls and the bell tower lying on the rubble.

The mosque of Saint Habib the Carpenter - a Christian martyr revered by Muslims - with its 13th century minaret, is also in ruins.

The Hebrew community was already on the verge of extinction and the earthquake, in which the last remaining couple, Saul and Fortüne Cenudi, died and which destroyed the synagogue “has put an end to 2,500 years of Jewish presence” in that land, laments the Jewish Community of Turkey.

Of the thousand Christians who lived in Antioch before the earthquake, only 20 remain;

The rest have gone to other towns in the province of Hatay or to the big cities of Turkey.

We tell our young people not to leave, that this city is a heritage left by their ancestors, but there is nothing left here and they have no opportunities

Trifon Yumurta, parish priest

“We tell our young people not to leave, that this city is a heritage left by their ancestors, but there is nothing left here and they have no opportunities, so I fear that we are the last generation of Christians,” says parish priest Trifon Yumurta. .

“It is a very hard situation for everyone, our Alawite and Sunni brothers, our Jewish and Armenian brothers, all of us who shared the same air.

Now the Christian community has dispersed,” laments Father Dimitri Dogum.

He himself serves in neighboring Alejandreta, because his church in Antioch no longer exists, and he does not know if he will be able to rebuild it (the amount offered by the Ministry of Culture only covers half of what is necessary to restore the temple), but he has hope: “ The community will return to Antioch, even if it takes us three, five years.

“Jesus will help us.”

The location of the city, of course, is not the most ideal: on the Eastern Anatolian Fault and in the floodplains of the Orontes, a river that has changed its course several times due to earthquakes.

This has devastated the city on several occasions, for example, during the earthquake of the year 115, which buried Emperor Trajan under the rubble - although he emerged unharmed -, or in the 6th century, when several earthquakes of magnitude 7 or greater killed hundreds of thousands of people.

Or those of the 12th century.

Or the one from 1872. Which makes you wonder if it is reasonable to continue living in that place.

“Engineering allows us to build anywhere, under the sea or on Mars, so it can be done, as long as we have good data,” says Büyükasik: “The problem is that until now we were asked to build taking into account earthquakes of force 7. , and the ones we had were much larger [the magnitude scale is logarithmic, so every tenth means that an earthquake is several times larger].”

The Orthodox Church of Saints Peter and Saints of Antioch in ruins a year after the earthquake that shook southern Turkey and northern SyriaAndrés Mourenza

The president of the college of engineers believes that the destruction should be used to design the city again, in a safer way, guaranteeing good public services and respecting its essence.

But the reconstruction plans, at the moment, are not transparent, and the Government of Turkey - which has temporarily expropriated a good part of the center - has not shared them either with the municipal government, in the hands of an opposing party, or with the Social Organizations.

On the anniversary of the earthquake, the Turkish president, the Islamist Recep Tayyip Erdogan, warned that if local authorities do not align with the central government "nothing will come to the city."

What the head of the opposition, the center-left Özgür Özel, denounced as “blackmail” to get the people of Antioquia to vote for Erdogan's party in the municipal elections on the 31st.

Misel Uyar can't help but cry while walking through the center of Antioquia.

“Not only have the buildings been destroyed, but also the memories of the people, the memory.

And what saddens me most is seeing that nothing is done to help, that nothing is fixed.”

Many fear that the “new Antioch” does not respect the essence of the place, its multiculturalism, that the city will be assimilated by the dominant Islamo-nationalist ideology.

For this reason, this young teacher and other colleagues from the Nehna initiative (we, in Arabic) have created a “memory map” where, in addition to pointing out the ancient monuments of Antioch, users can publish photographs of their most precious moments.

Not only have the buildings been destroyed, but also the memories of the people, the memory.

And what saddens me most is seeing that nothing is done to help, that nothing is fixed.

Misel Uyar, teacher

Saturday night falls and sound checks begin at Rosinante, a bar named in honor of Don Quixote's mount and located in one of the traditional stone houses in the center of Antioch.

Its owner, Dogus Genç, inaugurated it a few months before the fateful February 6, 2023, enough time for it to become one of the reference venues for the Antiochian night.

Recently, it has been reopened, after months of personal effort by Genç and his friends to rebuild the building exactly as it was, with every stone, every sign, every table, exactly in its previous place.

Even some bottles of wine that survived the earthquake intact.

“The earthquake has destroyed our city, and that has made people start to forget what it was like.

Upon crossing the Rosinante gate, however, he enters a place that is exactly the same as before, and begins to recover his memories of the city.

And that offers hope.”

There is something Sisyphean in this desire to rebuild the city of those who remained in Antioch.

In this willingness to carry the stone up the mountain knowing that the fates will throw it back into the void, in 20, 100, 500 years.

That there will be new earthquakes that may destroy everything they built with so much effort.

“Yes, there are people who have left, but many have stayed.

People who could have easier lives elsewhere.

That reflects the originality of Antioquia, its feeling of community,” says Genç.

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