‘For us, the world stopped’: Teammates and friends remember Turkey earthquake victim

All Nilay Aydoğan can talk about is how excited she is to see her grandmother. Cankaya Universitsi, a club in the Turkish women’s basketball league, had just won its last game before the early February break, and the Turkish forward was set to surprise her grandmother, Hasan, in a nearby county. Aydoğan made the plan two months ago. In a video she sent to friends, she recorded the shock on her grandmother’s face upon her arrival. The look in Hacer’s eyes was joyful and “very loving,” Aydogan’s friend Ebru Torun wrote in an email via one of Aydogan’s former co-workers translating.

Like Hacer, the 30-year-old Aydoğan radiated joy. Former teammates remember Aydoğan as a spontaneous hugger, sometimes jumping up on them saying, “I love you.” While riding the bus during road trips, she would often dance in the aisle. She will be the one to organize post-game selfies. “One of those people who never really has a bad day,” says Kankaya’s former teammate Barbara Turner, who is now an assistant coach on the WNBA’s Atlanta Dream team.

Aydoğan has played professionally for years, moving between Turkey’s two biggest divisions. No matter if she scored 20 minutes or two minutes, her attitude was consistent. Although not the most skilled, she routinely sought to protect the opposition’s best players. In practice, I made relentless efforts. In Turkish and English, she would break up at her classmates at one moment and then “laugh right after,” Turner recalled. She would often text a former teammate, “I’m so glad to meet you.” The truth is, her teammates are grateful to have known her.

At 4:17 a.m. local time on February 6, less than 48 hours after Cankaya’s victory, a 7.8-magnitude earthquake rocked northwestern Syria and southeastern Turkey, striking, among others, the Malatya Aydoğan province. Instead of running out of the house on her own, she stayed with her grandmother. WNBA veteran and teammate of Cankaya, Shavunte Zelos, was in Zagreb, Croatia, getting ready to play for that country’s national team when news of Aydoğan’s disappearance first broke in a team group chat. “At that moment, I didn’t care about anything other than where Nilay was,” she says.

This earthquake, along with a 7.5-magnitude aftershock that followed, left at least 50,000 people dead in Turkey and Syria, and more than 100,000 buildings destroyed or damaged. On February 20, the earth literally opened the most serious wounds: a 6.3-magnitude earthquake struck, devastating Hatay Province. Then, last Monday, a 5.2-magnitude earthquake hit the area just south of the city of Malatya, causing more anxiety and settlement.

Torun says Aydoğan told her family that when she died, she wanted to be buried near Haser. “This is where she is now,” says her friend. Days after the first earthquake, emergency workers found Aydoğan motionless in a pile of building rubble, her arms wrapped around her grandmother in a final embrace. shield. clutch. a hug.

During Turkey’s last major earthquake in 2020, Aydoğan’s instinct was to help and protect as well. She and her teammates were in a hotel in the eastern city of Elazig preparing for a match the next day, when a 6.7-magnitude earthquake struck at least 1,500 people and left at least 40 dead. Pictures fell from the walls of her hotel as its frame shook. Zelos was also there, as part of her first mission with Jankaya. She calls it “probably the scariest moment of my life”. Turner says she still has strong feelings from the earthquake.

When Zelos felt a shiver, she opened her hotel door in distress. Aydoğan was staying across the hall and Zelos and Turner rushed into her private room. I commanded them to fall to the ground, turn around, find cover. Soon after they were evacuated. The adjacent building completely collapsed.

“This whole scene popped into my mind when they told me[Aydoğan]was missing,” Turner says. “I knew she knew what she had to do.”

Adds Zelos: “It just goes to show what kind of person Nilay was. She wouldn’t leave her grandmother because of her heart.”

Aydoğan grew up in Istanbul and established close ties with her family from childhood until her death. the family, including her older brother and newly engaged fiancé; her dogs Chiko and Hera; Basketball was very important to her. Toron says she has “never killed any bugs, ants, or flowers, nor has she intentionally hurt anyone.”

“Every big guy I love.”

National basketball player Nilay Aydogan was killed under the wreckage along with her grandmother, Hacer Aydogan, who visited her in the Malatya earthquake.

Pictures taken by Nilay appeared on the night of the #earthquake. pic.twitter.com/lL8gvUyaUF

– morning (@sabah) February 28, 2023

Nowadays, pain in Turkey is widespread. Tent fields appeared. Countless cities – and lives – are in ruins, families displaced and loved ones gone. Sasha Goodlett, an NBA veteran who was once a teammate of Aydoğan, plays in Tarsus, a city just west of the initial epicenter. She thinks of her team’s head coach, who she says has had to bury more than 20 members of his family. “Every day he comes in, he’s trying to find motivation,” she says. “Like a lot of people here, they’re fighting. They want to move on. They want to keep going. But you can also see the pain they’re in.”

There is also a looming fear of further destruction. A co-worker at Goodlett’s tells her to pack an emergency duffle bag with a change of clothes, deodorant, and a bottle of water. She keeps it at her apartment door. Her coat is close. “These precautions sound silly,” she says, “and then you realize this is no joke.”

Destiny Slocum left Turkey on a league break a day before the country’s worst earthquake in nearly a century struck. She was flying home to Portland, Oregon, and sitting at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, when she learned of the natural disaster. “Pure luck,” she says of her timing. Like dozens of other Americans to wear outdoors in the transcontinental country, the 25-year-old guard is fond of Turkey – a center of overseas women’s basketball over the years. Haticespor was the third Turkish team I played for. “Turkey itself has a special place in my heart,” says Slocum, who joined the club in early January.

She had felt earthquakes in Hatay before. Quickly, though she digested the news on the way home, she realized this was different. During a three-hour layover before the final leg of her three-way trip home, a sense of amazement set in.

Slocum did not think about the condition of her (uninhabitable) apartment or some of the jewelry and clothes she had left behind. She thought, and continues to think, of her friends and teammates; about their families and coaches; And about other individuals from Hatay, one of whom was among the dead. I called as many as possible.

She has never met Slocum Aydogan, but she wishes she would have said hello even faster after meeting Hatayspor and Cankaya on February 4. She thinks of the delivery man who often delivered groceries to her apartment. He once asked her, “Why are you in Hatay?” She smiled and told him, “I play basketball.”

“These are the people who live in my head,” Slocum says.

She was only in Antakya, the capital of Hatay Province, for a few weeks, but she already felt the warmth of the small town. Chicago Sky center Asto N’Dour Vale, who played there last season, tells her the place is “like family.” These cities can sometimes only serve as short-term homes for international players, but, as Turner, who has dual citizenship and speaks Turkish, explains, “It’s easy to build a connection and an open heart toward them because they embrace you so well.”

Chicago’s Ndour-Fall teammate Elizabeth Williams plays in Mersin, a city on the country’s southern Mediterranean coast. As an athlete, Williams says she feels an “opportunity to raise awareness” of the earthquake, “to remind people of the humanity of the situation.” She is not alone in this regard.

Rubble clearing efforts in the province of Turkey where she and her grandmother were found after the February earthquake. (Muhammad Murat O’Neil/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Hordes displaced from Hatay found a temporary settlement in Mersin. There, the EuroLeague American weightlifting club organized a campaign for shoes, giving out food and bottled water. Across the country, Fenerbahçe has participated in blood drives, among other initiatives, with WNBA stars Breanna Stewart, Courtney Vandersloot and Emma Meissman.

It is necessary to make a tremendous effort to recover. However, the speed and impact of both the Turkish and Syrian government responses drew criticism. Aside from the large-scale efforts, local gestures can also be impactful. Torun sent the money to emergency workers in Malatya who were trying to dig Aydoğan out of the rubble. Slocum and his college roommate, dream-guard Mikaela Pevek, have set up their own relief fund. Goodlett helped a teammate’s family buy feminine hygiene products, and fundraised clothes from her alma mater, Georgia Tech, for a family in need. “It takes a village to help all the people affected by this,” says Peyton Whitted, a former teammate of Aydogan’s who plays for Basket Namur Capitale in Belgium.

Turner adds, “Obviously, you can’t replace lost lives, but if you can rebuild a city and help start something new, in any way, that would be great.”

Turkey’s top domestic league plays the rest of the season in honor of Aydoğan. It wasn’t until late last week that work resumed as yards paid tribute to her and the thousands of others who died. Slocum will not compete for the rest of the year as a result of the destruction in Hatay. “It’s much bigger than basketball,” she says. “This will continue for some people’s entire lives.”

Two weeks ago, Zelos and her Kankaya teammates got back into practice. Shots taken. The exercises have been run. There was little relief, however; A funeral had been held for their teammates the previous week. Hundreds had offered their condolences in a mosque in Istanbul. Family and friends were joined by dozens of basketball players, coaches and dignitaries, including Hedo Turkoglu, president of the Turkish Basketball Federation and 15-year NBA veteran. “For us, the world has kind of stopped,” Zelos says.

Zelos recently wrote “Play for Nilay” on her sneakers, a constant reminder of the person she describes as “caring,” “goofy,” and “full of joy.” The WNBA veteran made T-shirts with a picture of Aydoğan’s face to honor her friend. Cankaya wore them to warm-up exercises during his first game on Friday, with Aydoğan’s name mentioned on the field by the public address announcer when Cankaya’s list was presented.

A foundation has also been created in her memory. Her number 46 shirt was retired by her Turkish club, framed and hung on the wall in their facility. A white plaque next to the shirt reads “Nilay Forever”. “It is our duty, those of us who see it for ourselves, to make it real for everyone back home,” Goodlett says.

Those who knew Aydoğan continue to share photos and memories. Keep grieving.

And, like Aydoğan, they continue to embrace those they love.

(Top photo of Nilay Aydoğan and his teammates: Courtesy of Barbara Turner)

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