Rising from the ruins in Turkey

More than a year after two powerful earthquakes, Rotary’s relief efforts remain for many a path out of the wreckage

By JP Swenson and Hannah Shaw

It was just past 4 a.m. when Ferit Binzet finally drifted off to sleep. All night, one of his cats meowed and paced through his apartment in the city of Adıyaman, in southeastern Turkey. It was, looking back, as if the unsettled animal knew something was different about this night.

At 4:17 a.m., Binzet knew it too.

Loud booms shook him and his wife awake. Their bathroom walls exploded into the hallway. The kitchen caved in. The building lurched side to side. Binzet cried out to God.

“Please don’t take my soul.”

They ran from their crumbling home into a cold, heavy rainstorm, only to look back and see Binzet’s brother, who was living with them at the time, staring out a window, unmoving. Waves of concrete rubble rolled through the streets. Buildings swayed and fell. Screams pierced the roar of rain smacking against pavement.

After 85 seconds of sheer terror, the earth stilled.

Binzet went back inside the ruined building. He slapped his brother out of his shocked daze. “We can’t leave without the cats,” pleaded his wife, Mehtap Bostancı Binzet. They dug through the dust and debris, found their two cats, and left their home for what would be the last time.

‘A cascade of ruptures’ and a plan for relief

Turkey is known for its deadly earthquakes. The country sits at the junction of three major tectonic plates, with a fourth, smaller one squeezed between the others. (Scientists use the analogy of pinching a watermelon seed between your fingers and watching it squirt out.) Still, with a 7.8 magnitude, the quake, which occurred on 6 February 2023, was the strongest to hit the country in more than 80 years.

Its epicenter was near Kahramanmaraş in south central Turkey, near the border with Syria and about 75 miles from Adıyaman. What scientists called a “cascade of ruptures” tore along the East Anatolian Fault’s clamped rocks in both directions for a staggering 190 miles in total, shifting the earth more than 26 feet in some places. Nine hours later, a second quake, similar in size at 7.5 magnitude, struck north of the city in what seismologists call a “doublet,” compounding the damage.

Millions of people were left homeless after earthquakes struck Turkey and Syria in February 2023.

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Up to 9.1 million people were directly affected, according to some estimates. Between Turkey and Syria, the quakes left more than 50,000 people dead, over 100,000 injured, and several million homeless.

People felt the trembling far from the epicenter, including in Egypt, Greece, Armenia, and Iraq. The first quake awoke Emre Öztürk, then governor of Rotary District 2430, that morning at his home in Ankara, about 300 miles away. Within hours, he and the two other Turkish governors, Suat Baysan of District 2420 and Serdar Durusüt of District 2440, were on a video call to start mounting a response. “The first thing we did was turn on the TV and try to understand what happened,” Baysan says. “And we immediately realized the power of the earthquake.”

That same morning, they outlined a three-pronged plan that would grow into a multimillion-dollar global relief effort: fulfilling immediate emergency relief needs, providing shelter in the form of container cities, and meeting the long-term needs for everything from water treatment to kids’ education.

Throughout the day, Öztürk, whose district encompasses the affected area, called the Rotary club presidents and district team members who live there. He learned that some Rotary friends were under the rubble. In the end, six Rotarians and Rotaractors died in the quake.

One of his calls was to Binzet, who was then the president of the Rotary Club of Adıyaman-Nemrut and would become a key contributor to relief efforts despite his own staggering personal losses, which he had only begun to tally.

Loss and survival

A video journalist for Turkey’s NTV news, Binzet recorded the aftermath on his cellphone as he and his family emerged from the wreckage. About three of every five buildings in his neighborhood had collapsed. Muffled cries emanated from the rubble: Save us. Rescue us. We can’t breathe.

In the early afternoon, he and his brother went to check on their mother. They were especially concerned about her because she had Alzheimer’s. The door was open. Her nurse had left, and they found her inside, confused. “I’m dizzy,” she said. “What’s happening?” The two urged her to leave, but in her confusion she did not seem to grasp the situation and refused. At 1:24 p.m. the second earthquake struck. Binzet ran outside as a nearby building crumbled. Binzet’s brother jumped from a balcony just before the platform collapsed. (Their mother, still in the building, survived that second quake but has since died.)

Buildings weakened by the first earthquake were quickly consumed by the second. “It was like a horror movie,” Binzet says. People were gathering personal items from their homes when the second earthquake hit. Others who had been trapped since morning by debris or, in some cases, by the steel gates on their doors were crushed in the afternoon. One of Binzet’s cousins was rescued in the morning but died of a heart attack in the afternoon when a building collapsed near him.

In total, Binzet lost 41 relatives — an unimaginable toll. In time it would be felt especially hard during holidays like Ramadan, when he used to visit 15 or 20 homes among his extended family. After the disaster, that once joyful promenade shrank to just two homes. In an interview more than a year later, he weeps at the thought, adding, “We don’t have anybody here. All our relatives are gone.”

But in those days after the quakes, he was focused on surviving. There was no food and no electricity. In desperation, people had emptied market shelves within hours. On that first cold night, everyone remained in the darkened streets, sleeping in any shelter they could find. Binzet and six others took turns sleeping in his brother-in-law’s car.

While recording scenes on his camera, he wandered into a gym where it looked like people had taken shelter. He shot video of a dark room full of people under blankets. “Why are people lying on the floor?” he asked the security guard. “Those are dead bodies,” the guard replied. Binzet fainted.

Rotary mobilizes

As news spread of the devastation across southern Turkey, Rotary clubs in other parts of the country were desperate to do something. “There was a desire to send stuff immediately,” Baysan says, “but if you do, is there anybody that will take it, distribute it, make sure it goes to the right people?” The day after the earthquakes, he, Öztürk, and Durusüt met with the clubs in their districts and outlined their developing plan.

They quickly set up help centers in six hard-hit cities. Assigned Rotary club members coordinated the centers, discovering residents’ needs and relaying them so that donors could send the right supplies. Rotary, Rotaract, and Interact clubs in the three districts sent more than 200 trucks of emergency supplies, including food, water, generators, heaters, diapers, sanitary pads, fuel, toys, and body bags.

“The whole Rotary family in Turkey acted as one,” Öztürk says. “We used all of our power, all of our collaboration, to do something to create some relief for the earthquake victims.”

The day of the earthquakes, temperatures were only 37 degrees Fahrenheit at the epicenter, and in the following days they dipped below freezing. The rainstorms changed to snowstorms in some areas, and survivors battled the windchill and hypothermia. District 2440 had an existing supply of tents and immediately established a tent city in İskenderun, on the Mediterranean coast, that Rotary members administered for more than a month before the country’s disaster agency took it over. “We were the first NGO [nongovernmental organization] that was present in that region,” Baysan says. Tent cities in Adıyaman and Kırıkhan quickly followed. Rotary clubs worked with ShelterBox, Rotary’s project partner in disaster relief, to distribute over 2,500 tents and played a pivotal role in that organization’s relief efforts by making introductions to local leaders.

Öztürk spent the next 40 days trekking back and forth between the three tent cities, six coordination centers, and his home in Ankara to report back on what he saw and plan future steps. Baysan and Durusüt similarly traveled into the field to witness the needs and help.

Meanwhile, Rotary’s global membership mobilized to support their work. Within hours of the earthquakes, Jennifer Jones, then the Rotary International president, activated Rotary’s disaster response efforts, and within the week, Rotary established a dedicated disaster response fund that received more than $2.7 million in contributions. Additional aid efforts used Rotary Foundation global grants totaling about $1.4 million. Projects were confined to Turkey since Rotary has no clubs in Syria, where the earthquakes compounded a humanitarian crisis triggered by more than a decade of civil war.

Lifesaving relief and direct donations streamed in from all over the Rotary world, and so did volunteers. A Rotary member and doctor from Indonesia texted Öztürk, “I’m coming with medical supplies and will be there in two days.” The doctor lived in one of the tent cities for weeks and treated people.

Changing the fate of a city

Today in Adıyaman, children bike and play in the streets, conversation is exchanged over aromatic platters of kebab, and the melodic Muslim call to prayer crackles over loudspeakers five times a day. But even as life goes on in many respects, in other ways time seems to have stopped, like the clock tower that stands tall in the city center, its four faces frozen in time at 4:17, the moment the first earthquake struck.

Before the disaster, Adıyaman was known for its blend of archaeological sites and modern architecture, its stunning natural landscapes, its apricots and pistachios. Now, mountains once blocked from view by towering buildings have reclaimed the city’s backdrop. Shells of destroyed buildings and abandoned businesses loom next to sweeping fields of rubble. Distant cranes offer a constant reminder that Adıyaman is in an extended period of transition.

Rotary members from around the region know Adıyaman. Its province is the site of an annual project in which they accompany people with disabilities on a hike up Mount Nemrut. The UNESCO World Heritage Site features colossal stone heads and statues at the tomb of a first century B.C. ruler of a Greco-Persian kingdom. Rotary relief efforts focused here and in Hatay province on the Mediterranean coast, places with a lot of damage and strong Rotary cultures. “A Rotary club can change the fate of a city,” Öztürk says. “If we didn’t have Rotary clubs in Adıyaman and Hatay, we wouldn’t likely have been able to deliver this much aid.”

There was also the “Ferit effect,” he says of Binzet. “He was always in the field and knew the needs,” Öztürk says. “The city of Adıyaman should erect a statue of Ferit.”

Binzet was born in Adıyaman and has lived there his entire life. He joined Rotary in 2008. As a journalist, Binzet had the communication skills and the reach to advocate for the city. In the early days after the earthquakes, for example, he took a video of a toilet overflowing with waste and menstrual hygiene products for the news. Following the broadcast, people all over the region sent menstrual products. “He is a born communicator,” Baysan says.

His wife, Mehtap, a photographer and designer, joined the Rotary Club of Adıyaman-Nemrut shortly after the earthquakes and was the club’s president in 2023-24.

Adıyaman became the location of one of four container cities that Rotary members supported in the affected region, the second prong of their plans. In total, donations from Rotary members supplied 350 of the prefabricated small homes. The temporary city on the northern edge of Adıyaman includes two streets of Rotary-sponsored homes: Imagine Street and Hope Street.

The modified shipping containers, laid out in tight rows, provide enough space for essentials such as toilets, showers, cooking utensils, beds, and air conditioning, as well as comforts of home such as televisions, porches, and gardens.

Sadet Pişirici, 74, lives alone in a Rotary-provided container. Before the earthquakes, she lived a “proper life,” she says. Her hopes echo those of survivors all over Turkey: She wants her grandchildren to go to school and become active citizens. She wants to maintain her health so she can keep walking and enjoying life.

Along with the hundreds of other residents of this container city, Pişirici benefits from Rotary’s field hospital, a short distance from her home. The hospital has been operational since April 2023 and serves about 200 patients every day. It has its own generator, an ambulance, monitoring and ultrasound devices, a blood testing lab, and a shower that doctors can use between shifts.

Today, chief physician Mesut Kocadayı sits with a patient surrounded by the hospital’s white canvas walls. Working as a doctor in the city, he began treating his fellow survivors in the wreckage immediately after escaping his own home.

Survivors suffered significant wounds and many required amputations. The health system collapsed momentarily when the city was struggling to even bury its dead. But other health care workers streamed into Adıyaman from China to Sweden to help.

“The first three to four days were the most difficult because there was no electricity, water, and heating,” Kocadayı says. People lost their appetites, suffered from scabies and gastrointestinal diseases, and endured poor hygienic conditions. Some injuries will last a lifetime.

Building a kindergarten

The disaster affected nearly every aspect of daily life, which shows in the assortment of projects that Rotary members have supported: building water treatment plants, providing farmers seedlings and cows, opening a veterinary clinic. “Rotary has done great, great work here,” Baysan says. “People are working to rebuild and reshape their lives. I’m very happy to see that.”

But when looking at the results from the third prong of the Rotarians’ response plan — sustainable long-term projects — a kindergarten might be the most appropriate place to start.

After one kindergarten in Adıyaman was destroyed, funds from Rotary members in Japan paid to build a new school from the ground up.

Taking a tour, a group of Rotarians greets the school’s principal, Zeliha Özlem Atlı, with a warm “merhaba” as they approach the entrance. Decorations from a recent holiday still hang amid toys and kid-size chairs. The principal’s goal: make this the best kindergarten in Adıyaman.

She’s made great progress. “The children needed materials like toys and books,” she says. “With the support of Rotary, they got all of it.” The school is on the city’s outskirts. She says that no one can believe there is such a nice school in the area.

“My first project is taking them to theaters and movies,” she says, explaining that many students have never been. “Then, I want to take them to other cities, because they’ve only seen Adıyaman.”

To Atlı, this school is a family. “The teachers also have trauma; some are still living in containers,” she says. “We support each other as a family. We don’t use the word colleague. I’m not the principal here. I’m the big sister.”

Atlı says the kids are in a much better place than a year ago. Every morning, they hug their teachers, who have become their role models. Most of the children, she says, want to become teachers someday.

Stray cats and memories

Mehtap and Ferit Binzet step out of their car into the stillness of their old neighborhood. The familiar call to prayer buzzes from the loudspeaker of a distant mosque, its only competition the occasional passing car. Their old apartment spills into the street around them, where it will stay until the city clears the rubble.

This was the building they moved into 13 years ago after they got married, but one day the remaining pieces of it will be erased. “All my memories are here,” Ferit Binzet says.

Concrete and glass crunch beneath their feet. They call out for one of the stray cats they took care of before the earthquakes. “Gece!” The cat, whose name means “night,” dutifully appears.

After the earthquakes, the two sought help to deal with their emotional trauma. Their therapist recommended replacing painful memories with positive ones. That’s what brings them to their old home every other day, when they come to feed the stray cats. It helps, but it’s hard. “Every time I come here, I live that day again,” Mehtap Bostancı Binzet says. “It’s not easy.”

They remember escaping the house, the sound of the first earthquake. And they feel the pain of others who, like them, are trying to survive surviving. “Everywhere we look, we remember our loved ones. We also suffer from their pains.”

But they find that helping others helps them. Their optimism, their gratitude, breaks through. “Thank God we have friends all around the world,” Ferit Binzet says, as Gece observes from a nearby cement wall. “It’s better to say ‘Thank God’ than ‘I wish.’”

This story originally appeared in the November 2024 issue of Rotary magazine.

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