ANKARA — The photograph of a father holding his daughter’s hand killed in Turkey’s February 6 earthquake has provoked an outpouring of sympathy and help from world wide, he advised Agence France-Presse.
Around three weeks after the catastrophe that killed extra then 44,000 folks in Turkey and hundreds extra in neighboring Syria, AFP photographer Adem Altan tracked down Mesut Hancer within the capital Ankara.
He had moved there from Kahramanmaras, close to the epicenter of the quake.
As nicely as his daughter, misplaced below the ruins of an eight-storey block of flats, “I lost my mother, my brothers, my nephews in the quake,” stated Hancer.
“But nothing compares to burying a child. The pain is indescribable.”
The picture of Hancer carrying an orange jacket in opposition to the chilly and rain whereas holding his daughter’s hand rising from the rubble, was printed on many newspaper entrance pages and seen hundreds of thousands of occasions on-line.
It turned a logo of a catastrophe that devastated tens of hundreds of lives, drawing particular consideration to his household.
Now, a businessman has provided the previous baker an administrative job at a TV channel and given the household an residence in Ankara.
Meanwhile a portray of Hancer’s daughter Irmak as an angel alongside her father, donated by an artist, hangs of their front room.
“I couldn’t let go of her hand. My daughter was sleeping like an angel in her bed,” he recalled.
Mesut Hancer, his spouse Gulseren, and their kids Beste, Ezgi, and Berkay pose of their appartment in Ankara on February 25, 2023, because the household tries to rebuild, after shedding daughter Irmak, 15, within the earthquake that devastated the southeastern area of Turkey. Adem Altan/ AFP
Waiting for assist
Hancer was working in his bakery when the quake hit at 4:17 a.m. (0117 GMT).
Calling residence, he discovered his spouse and three grownup kids have been secure at residence of their one-storey home, though it was broken because the earth shook.
But no-one may attain Irmak, the youngest, who had stayed the evening at her grandmother’s home.
She had deliberate to spend time with cousins visiting from Istanbul and Hatay.
Rushing to his mom’s constructing, Hancer discovered the eight-storey block collapsed right into a mound of rubble.
In the center, amid the particles of on a regular basis life, was his daughter.
Waiting greater than a day earlier than any rescue group arrived, Hancer and different native folks tried to seek out their family members below the ruins themselves, even attempting—and failing—to shift concrete blocks by hand.
Unable to get well Irmak’s physique, he remained sat by her aspect.
“I held her hand, I stroked her hair, I kissed her cheeks,” he remembers.
Later, he noticed Adem Altan taking photographs of the scene.
“Take pictures of my child,” he stated in a quiet, damaged voice. — Agence France-Presse
Source: www.gmanetwork.com
