With his bare hands, Yusuf Caliska, who had opened a clothing store in his hometown of Nurdagi in Kahramanmaras¸ province in southern Türkiye, just a few months ago, after moving from the capital Ankara, is trying to clear the rubble to find the bodies of his parents. He is lucky to have survived the earthquake but it has turned his store and his house to rubble and with them his fortune. Under the debris lie his parents who could not get out fast enough to save themselves.
At 4:17 am (local time) on February 6, the first quake, measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale, with its epicentre in the nearby province of Gaziantep struck, followed by another 7.5 magnitude quake whose epicentre was in the town of Pazarcık, just a few kilometres from Caliska’s home. The town of Pazarcık, one of the oldest human settlements and, until a few days ago, an attraction for historians, anthropologists and archaeologists, has been erased from history. Only piles of rubble remain.
