{"id":75893,"date":"2024-03-29T20:12:46","date_gmt":"2024-03-29T18:12:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/visualjournalism.de\/?post_type=magazin&p=75893"},"modified":"2026-09-28T12:39:15","modified_gmt":"2026-09-28T10:39:15","slug":"turkey-earthquake-2023-bereaved-man-fighting-for-justice","status":"publish","type":"magazin","link":"https:\/\/visualjournalism.de\/en\/magazine\/silence\/turkey-earthquake-2023-bereaved-man-fighting-for-justice\/","title":{"rendered":"Turkey earthquake 2023: how a bereaved man is fighting for justice"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n
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\n\tSilence<\/a><\/div>\r\n

\r\n Turkey earthquake 2023: how a bereaved man is fighting for justice <\/h2>\r\n\r\n
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A man loses his grandmother when a hospital building collapses in the earthquake \u2013 and takes up the fight against those responsible.
\nBy Elena Jaekel<\/a> (text), Felix Posner<\/a> (photos)<\/b><\/p>\n <\/div>\r\n \r\n

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They say buildings begin to dance just before they buckle and rubble and debris rain down<\/strong>. Alican Kenar wakes with a start to the doors banging and rattling against his wardrobe, while the water in the glass on his bedside table sloshes over in waves. The deserted streets of Iskenderun shake so violently that tall buildings sway like pendulums. The Kenar family\u2019s house on the city\u2019s waterfront withstands the quake, while others crash to the ground with a furious roar, burying their residents and plunging the region into dust and fog. Only the street dogs are said to have started howling a few moments earlier. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At around 4 a.m., pent-up tectonic stress is released explosively and sweeps across south-eastern Turkey and Syria. The earthquake\u2019s focus lay at a comparatively shallow depth; the seismic waves lost little energy on their way to the surface \u2013 and developed such destructive force that they wiped out entire districts. Many buildings, especially newer ones that had been built high, collapsed like houses of cards in the wind. Like Syria, Turkey lies in one of the most earthquake-prone regions in the world, where several tectonic plates meet. As they move, they sometimes lock into one another, press against each other and build up stress that can be released from one moment to the next, like fireworks, when rock edges break off. On 6 February 2023, it was the Anatolian and Arabian plates that caused the earthquake in which so many people lost their lives and livelihoods. <\/p>\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n

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