HATAY, or ATLANTIS

HATAY, or ATLANTIS?

A 21st Century Extinction Episode?

Antakya is No More

I am familiar with pain. I know about the awful grief a person feels on losing a sibling or parent. And now, a burgeoning collective grief takes over, scorching ones soul. In this relentless state of restlessness I feel the pain of strangers to the depths of my very being, on the verge of tears in mid speech, unable to sleep at night. These emotions are at least as shocking as losing a loved one. Like millions of people in Turkey, Syria and abroad, this is my post-earthquake condition. Like most people, I have been suffocated by wanting to help without knowing exactly how; by struggling to share feelings of grief; by being unable, beyond making donations, to hold the hand of any of those people in their agony.

I am someone who knows what an earthquake is, more or less. Or at least that’s what I thought.??

Until 17 past four in the morning on February 6th 2023.

Yet in street after post-apocalyptic street, almost no structure remains untouched in Antakya, the ancient city of Antioch that hosted some of the most striking remains of Greek and Roman culture and empire and of course Judaism, Christianity and Islam. And so it goes for Antakya’s ingrained culture of tolerance and multi-faith kinship that comes with its population. All is gone.

Resetting the Past

From now on, for Antakya, dates will not be recorded as BC and AD but as Before the Earthquake and After the Earthquake.?

Only photographs remain of the people whose bodies remain under the rubble of the earthquake. Hundreds of thousands of survivors have fled.

Sibel from Antakya is in tears, unable to salvage any photos from the rubble that she digs up with her bare hands. “My childhood memories are all gone” she cries. Sibel is my sister. Her hair suddenly, very suddenly, is turning white.?

The extent of the suffering in Hatay is beyond the power of words to describe. But earthquake survivors in Antakya all agree on one point: “We too have died. But we cannot be buried.”?

How many times was Antakya destroyed during those 80 seconds? Armenians, Jews, Catholics, Orthodox, Alawites and Sunni, everyone was convinced the end had come as the skies turned grey and the heavens unleashed a ferocious rainstorm with celestial orchestras of thunder and lightning.????

The gods heard Daphne, but not Antakya?

It’s the sheer scale of it that beggars belief. Nothing this devastating over such a massive area has happened since the founding of Antiókheia around 300 BC. by Seleucus I Nicator, a former general of Alexander the Great.?

The Olympic games took place in modern day Harbiye from 44 AD, in the district of Daphne (current day Defne, meaning laurel in Turkish) but were moved to Athens after an earthquake struck the city. The winners’ laurel crowns were replaced with olive leaf wreaths as the Athenians did not have laurel. The games never returned to the land of laurel; it took a very long time for Antioch to recover from this blow, portrayed in part in the 1959 movie Ben Hur.?

The 6th February 2023 earthquake recalls that of the year 526 that killed some 250,000 people in Rome’s second largest city and buried Antioch’s legendary mosaics and magnificent buildings.????????????????

Antioch is hugely significant to Christians. The city is referred to countless times in the Bible, thrice by name.?

The 21st century began auspiciously with the visit of Pope John Paul II in 2001. He spoke of the city as the place where the term Christian was first used in history, and where in modern times various Christian denominations, as well as multilingual communities of Muslims and Jews, lived in peace and solidarity with each other.? Who could have imagined that much of the historic fabric of Antakya including ancient churches, mosques, and synagogue, would be reduced to rubble just two decades later???

My home region is one of the few places on earth where foreign and domestic administrations have come and gone without much bloodshed. My parents and grandparents experienced Syrian control, the British and French mandates, even an autonomous republic, Hatay State, that lasted 10 months on the eve of the Second World War, all interwoven with the Ottoman State and the modern Republic of Turkey. My grandmother S?d?ka Arslanyüre?i’s birth certificate was in Arabic; her marriage papers in French; she had an ID card from Hatay State; and her death certificate was in Turkish. “Only the flags changed from time to time, everything remained calm, people weren’t fighting” she said, summing up her experience of these changes. S?d?ka Han?m described a state of affairs unique to Antakya and its people that would be difficult to replicate anywhere else.?

Families are scattered to the winds. Mine have fled Antakya to Istanbul, Izmir, Denizli, Antalya – wherever there seems a prospect of rebuilding lives. We consider ourselves quite miraculously fortunate not to have lost close family members. Most families in Antakya have not been so lucky. Many have been entirely cut down.??

6th February 2023: the end of millennia of history

The Titus Tunnel that pierces the mountains to bring water to Antakya would be challenging to build even with modern technology. The tunnel had stood intact for some two thousand years, through all manner of natural events and disasters, but it was damaged in the 6th February earthquake. Two buildings, the Antakya Museum, which houses the world’s richest collection of mosaics, and the Museum Hotel with the world’s largest mosaic piece, have somehow been spared. Little else remains untouched by the catastrophe.

Not making it through the day is bad. But being happy to be alive???

No streetlights illuminate Kurtulu? Caddesi any more, the first street in the ancient world to be illuminated and until 6th February a 24-hour avenue of commerce. Daylight is dim in Antakya. We need the helping hands of so many good people around the world to give us at least a chance for a brighter future.??

UNESCO gave Antakya the World City of Gastronomy title in 2019, an accolade that reflects the region’s diversity of people and cultures and of course food; layer by layer, Greeks, Romans, Phoenicians, Christians, Jews, Alawites, Syrians, Armenians and so many others have imprinted their unique stamp and values on the city, to be carried on into the future.

Those of us who have Antakya as our hometown want to forget the most catastrophic event in our history. It is truly a disaster on a biblical scale, recalling the annihilation of the city of Gomorrah referred to in the oldest Torah scrolls in Turkey, which had been kept safe for 500 years in the now flattened synagogue.???

The Bible mentions that earlier extinction episode saying “The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”?

I am glad that my grandmother S?d?ka Han?m was spared having to see her home and her city in ruins.?

Indeed, the old has passed away. The new, alas, will be a long time coming.

HASAN ARSLANYUREGI, born in Antakya, ?