A year on from Turkey’s quake disaster, the trauma haunts survivors

Thousands of lives changed forever when powerful quakes hit Turkey and Syria last year, and mental scars remain.

Gaziantep, Turkey – When Elmas Abdulghani has a flashback, her body still shakes like the floor of her apartment on that early February morning a year ago.

She was woken up by the screams of her husband, crying: “Elmas, wake up! Save your life!”

“I just remember fear and confusion,” 35-year-old Abdulghani says, almost tearing up as her mind travels back in time.

Abdulghani’s husband did not survive the first magnitude 7.8 earthquake, followed by a second magnitude 7.6 one later in the day and hundreds of aftershocks, that killed more than 50,000 people in southeastern Turkey and northern Syria on February 6 last year.

But Abdulghani did and, since that day, she has had to deal with the restlessness of mind that came from losing the love of her life and her home in Gaziantep, an important city in the southeast a few kilometres from the epicentre.