Authorities are set to begin restoration imminently, however some warn a rush to rebuild might threaten the town’s distinctive character and communities.
Antakya, Turkey – When Hasan Sivri was a highschool scholar in Antakya’s Outdated Metropolis, he used to go the Protestant church on daily basis.
His route would typically take him previous different church buildings, mosques and a synagogue, too. Church bells mingled with the decision to prayer, and the streets of the traditional metropolis resounded with totally different languages – all serving as a timeless reminder of its vibrant cultural range.
“It was actually distinctive and had a unique ambiance than different cities in Anatolia or Turkey,” Sivri, an Arab Alevi, advised Al Jazeera. “It is called a ‘metropolis of peace’. So many associates of mine have been from totally different ethnic, ideological and non secular backgrounds.”
On February 6, two highly effective earthquakes devastated swaths of southern Turkey and northwest Syria, killing greater than 50,000 individuals and destroying tens of hundreds of buildings.
Antakya, traditionally often called Antioch, was significantly hard-hit.
![This mosque is actually a former Byzantine church, transformed into a mosque in the 13th century. "Habib" means "beloved" and "neccar" means "carpenter." Habib-i Neccar was killed by pagans while he was trying to protect two messengers sent to Antioch by Prophet Jesus.[Getty Images]](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/GettyImages-471200771.jpg?w=725&resize=725%2C482)
Sivri, now a 33-year-old freelance journalist dwelling within the Turkish capital, Ankara, reached the Outdated Metropolis on the night of February 6 and located a lot of it in ruins.
The minaret and dome of the centuries-old Habibi-i Neccar Mosque was a pile of rubble; the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch had collapsed, thrusting its belfry right into a neighbouring constructing and killing a resident; the town’s synagogue was scored by fissures; and the Protestant church was additionally in ruins.
“Once I noticed these buildings had collapsed, it made me really feel like part of my recollections and my world had collapsed with them,” Sivri stated.
Within the following days and weeks, as rescue efforts ended, the Outdated Metropolis was largely deserted. Those that remained have been pressured to select precarious paths over mountains of rubble that blocked the slender streets.
On the Sunday after the earthquake, about 10 members of the Protestant congregation gathered in entrance the rubble of their church to hope and sing hymns. They have been nonetheless in shock.
Corc Kocamahhul stated the constructing was a few century outdated and it had been used as a church for the reason that 12 months 2000.
“We by no means anticipated it might collapse, however sadly Antakya has disappeared and so has our church,” he stated, changing into tearful as he talked concerning the metropolis’s plight. “I hope we construct this church once more as quickly as doable.”
However whereas the Turkish authorities say the restoration of Antakya’s historic buildings will begin imminently, some are cautioning in opposition to a rush to rebuild the town’s heritage and warn that its distinctive character and communities are liable to being misplaced endlessly.
‘We must always deal with individuals first’
Antioch was constructed by the Orontes River in 300 BC by Seleucus I Nicator, a number one basic of Alexander the Nice and the founding father of the Seleucid Empire, who named it Antioch.
It shortly discovered prosperity as a key buying and selling hub alongside the routes linking the Mediterranean to Asia.
In 64 BC, the strategically positioned metropolis was seized by the Romans and went on to change into certainly one of their empire’s most essential cities. Over the centuries, it was additionally dominated by the Byzantines, the Arab Rashidun Caliphate, the Seljuks, the Crusaders, the Mamluks and the Ottomans.
Antioch was additionally an early centre of Christianity; it was right here that the disciples of Jesus Christ have been first known as “Christians”.
After World Conflict I, the town and its province of Hatay fell beneath a French mandate and have become the short-lived Hatay State in 1938. Hatay solely joined Turkey the next 12 months, 16 years after the formation of the trendy Turkish Republic.
Many Christians and different minorities left Antakya in 1939. The demographics of the town modified considerably within the following a long time as Christian and Jewish populations additional dwindled and Syrian refugees started arriving from 2012. Nonetheless, Antakya, house to some 200,000 individuals, retained extra ethnic and non secular range than most different elements of Turkey.
All through its historical past, the town has been destroyed and rebuilt a number of instances on account of earthquakes and battle. Little stays of the town’s Hellenistic interval. The Habibi-i Neccar Mosque, beforehand a pagan temple and a church, was destroyed by an earthquake in 1853 and rebuilt by the Ottomans.
The tremors in early February killed an estimated 20,000 individuals in Hatay, in response to its metropolitan mayor, and many of the province’s buildings both collapsed or have been severely broken.
Many non-religious landmarks have been additionally destroyed or broken, together with the outdated bazaar, the Affan espresso home courting again to the 1910s, and the 1927 constructing used as a parliament for the Hatay State.
![City of Antakya (Hatay), Turkey - stock photo Aerial view of the city of Antakya, also called Hatay, in southern Turkey. In ancient times the city was known as Antioch. The Orontes River flows through the middle of the city. [Getty Images]](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/GettyImages-1652116271.jpg?w=724&resize=724%2C483)
The federal government, which faces presidential and parliamentary elections in Might, is eager to push forward with reconstruction efforts.
Yahya Coşkun, deputy basic director of cultural heritage and museums at Turkey’s tradition and tourism ministry, advised Al Jazeera that a injury evaluation had nearly been completed in Antakya and that the essential items of the historic buildings have been being salvaged.
He stated that a restoration course of, led by the ministry and performed in cooperation with educational consultants and nationwide and worldwide cultural companies, will start in March.
“The precedence can be given to constructed public heritage together with monuments, mosques, church buildings, historic homes … then the privately owned heritage can be managed,” he stated.
“We've got plans and reliefs of many of the historic buildings. These buildings can be restored in accordance with [the] authentic plans and the unique supplies can be used as a lot as doable.”
Emre Can Dağlıoğlu, an editor on the platform Nehna, a collective of Arabic-speaking Orthodox Christians in Antakya, advised Al Jazeera that – whereas well being, hygiene and lodging wants have to be tackled urgently – the rebuilding of the town’s heritage ought to be thought of rigorously earlier than main reconstruction begins.
“It ought to be undertaken collectively, not solely by the federal government from the highest down however from all sectors and native organisations and associations and people, to consider how we must always rebuild the town from scratch,” he stated.
Some communities are liable to whole erasure. The town’s Jewish group, maybe numbering fewer than 20 individuals, misplaced its chief and his spouse within the earthquake.
Dağlıoğlu stated that folks displaced by the earthquake wanted to be helped to return to Antakya to revive its range together with the buildings. He stated he feared the town, the place there may be important opposition to the federal government, may very well be gentrified or socially engineered.
“What makes Antakya lovely is its distinctive social cloth, its social coherence, its numerous inhabitants, and we must always discover a technique to return these individuals – Jews, Armenians, Alevis, Orthodox Christians, Turks, Kurds, Syrian refugees – to the town,” he stated.
“We must always deal with individuals first, as a result of it's actually meaningless to rebuild all these non secular websites with out their individuals.”
Tufan Kaya, a member of Koruma Akademisi, a Turkish NGO which research and advises on heritage conservation, stated that whereas some restoration tasks in Turkey have gained worldwide prizes, the nation’s report is mostly poor.
He stated restoration is usually marred by low cost tenders awarded to building firms with out heritage experience that use new supplies and constructing methods which aren't at all times aesthetically pleasing or as structurally sound. Contracts are handed out in a system based mostly on patronage, regardless of the political social gathering, he added.
“Restoration is completely totally different from different elements [of the construction industry]. It’s not a enterprise, it shouldn’t be achieved by tenders given to whoever pays the most cost effective value – if you happen to make the restoration that method, the outcomes can be horrible,” Kaya stated.
Many imagine the landmarks might even have been higher protected within the first place.
Regardless of its magnificence, a lot of Antakya was blighted by most of the similar points present in cities throughout Turkey akin to haphazard city planning, mind-numbing identikit complexes, and a proliferation of low cost and ugly buildings – lots of which couldn't face up to earthquakes as a result of constructing codes weren't enforced.
Kaya stated that historic buildings within the metropolis have been additionally topic to the identical poor enforcement of constructing codes when renovated.
“Turkey’s laws are excellent on paper,” Kaya stated. “However, virtually, individuals don’t apply them.”
Coşkun pointed to the shortage of great injury to Antakya’s main museums as proof that the ministry had discovered from earlier disasters and was in a position to assemble buildings that might face up to highly effective earthquakes.
“I don't imagine that we might require new legal guidelines for the safety of historic buildings [but] vigilant implementation of those present instruments stays a very powerful level,” he stated.
‘Misplaced every thing however its hope’
These from Antakya or with a powerful bond to the town draw power from its lengthy historical past of renewal.
“I imagine that Antakya has actually misplaced every thing however its hope,” Dağlıoğlu stated.
New civil initiatives involved with rebuilding the town are bobbing up. Nehna is working with native organisations to draft a coverage doc to be despatched to the authorities. The civil platform Antakya Yeniden (Antakya Once more) goals to convey collectively teachers, architects, archaeologists and artists.
Kaya stated native individuals must also have a say in how the buildings are reconstructed to protect their identification.
“The type of data that ought to be inherited from the previous shouldn't be determined by bureaucrats from Ankara, it's best to get native individuals concerned,” he stated. “In any other case, then they simply construct some vacationer entice that doesn’t inform the actual story of the constructing.”
Hakan Mertcan, a tutorial on the College of Bayreuth, Germany, has written and edited a number of books on Antakya, together with Asi Gülüşlüm (which roughly interprets to My Darling with a Rebellious Smile).
Asi (rebellious) can be the Turkish identify for the town’s river, and the title references the inhabitants’ welcoming and good-natured spirit, together with their historic resistance to makes an attempt at assimilation or social engineering.
“We can not simply belief the federal government’s efforts,” he stated. “They must rebuild the town, however with civil society, the opposition, ecologists, feminists, leftists, and with worldwide organisations.”
Sivri additionally stated the town have to be rebuilt in a method that returns its earthquake-displaced populace and restores the largely peaceable, harmonious ambiance alongside the great thing about its historic buildings and monuments.
“If we will return and rebuild the town once more [like this], then we will once more name it Antakya,” he stated.
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