Thousands participate in the vigil on the anniversary of the Turkish earthquake

More than 10,000 people gathered early this morning for a vigil to mark the first anniversary of the devastating earthquakes that struck southeastern Turkey, with some protesting what they described as government neglect in the aftermath.

The 7.8-magnitude earthquake, the deadliest disaster in the country's modern history, destroyed towns and parts of cities in the southeast of the country and neighboring Syria.

It led to the deaths of more than 50,000 people in Turkey and about 5,900 people in Syria, leaving millions homeless.

In Turkey's southeastern Hatay province, the worst affected in the country, people called on the government and local authorities to resign during the vigil, and demanded that officials not present themselves at the memorial, while booing the speeches.

Earthquake survivors gather at Valley Origin Park to participate in the silent march for those who lost their lives

In the main square of the city of Hatay, located in the province, some chanted: “Can anyone hear my voice?” Health Minister Fahrettin Koca also spoke, a slogan referring to the calls heard from under the rubble as people waited for days for help to arrive.

Residents said that many people died not because the buildings collapsed, but because they waited for a long time under the rubble due to the cold.

After the vigil, people threw flowers into the Orontes River, which runs through the city.

Murphy Gursel, who lost her aunt, stepfather and cousins ​​in the quake, called out their names as she tossed a carnation into the water for each one.

“No one was with these people that day,” she said. “The pain of these people is that they could not be saved. The pain of these people is that they could not have their voices heard.”

Protesters clash with Turkish riot police officers in front of a police checkpoint in Antakya

“These (protests) are an echo of people's inner pain. They are an echo of how much people are suffering. There is no way to describe how to compensate for the pain here. These people's hearts are bleeding.”

Nasiba Duzgun said that she was throwing flowers in the water to everyone she knew, and that this step unites the people of Hatay.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in a statement on social media that the pain of loss caused by the earthquakes is still as present now as it was a year ago, and that his government took action in the immediate aftermath of what they call the “earthquake disaster.” a century”.

More than 53 thousand people were killed in the earthquake

He said, “The unity of the century emerged in the face of the disaster of the century.”

However, Nur Sabah Aksu, a resident of Hatay, said the government has abandoned the city's residents to die.

“Thousands of people died here. Where were they? Why did they leave Hatay like this? Why did they forget about us?” Asked.

Grieving Turks are still coming to terms with how a 7.8 magnitude earthquake could upend the lives of millions of people in a matter of seconds while they were still asleep.

An updated tally released last Friday showed that 53,537 people died in 11 southeastern provinces officially designated as disaster areas.

The confirmed loss of 5,951 lives in neighboring Syria makes last year's earthquake one of the world's ten deadliest in the past 100 years.

Ancient cities like Antakya were effectively wiped off the map.

Others suffer from large gaps in the places of residential towers that collapsed like houses of cards when the ground began moving at 4.17 am.

Many of them are still displaced – worry

Director of Concern in Turkey, Shahzad Cemil, described the devastation caused by the earthquake as “horrific.”

Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland programme, he said the affected area was larger than Portugal, the Netherlands and Austria.

He said that about 670,000 people have been living in containers since the disaster.

Regarding how Syria dealt with the situation, Mr. Jamil said that about four million people were trapped in a small corridor in the northwest when the earthquake struck.

“This was not the first disaster for them in the past ten years. They were constantly displaced, re-displaced, and displaced. For them, it was a disaster within a disaster within a disaster.”

He added that this came at a time when weather conditions were very bad.

“We are talking about temperatures of -10 to -15 degrees Celsius in that area, where people are already living in very poor conditions where there is no place for people to pitch a new tent if there is a new family displaced.

“So, imagine how people would have dealt with this situation, when what you already had ran out, which is more than four million people living in need of food assistance already.

“We are talking about 260,000 people receiving food aid from the World Food Programme [World Food Programme]”It is a very terrible situation.”

He said there was a need for sanitation systems, housing improvements and “cash assistance, which was essential for people to resume their lives and resume their dignified lives.”

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