BBC OS Conversations: The earthquake in Turkey and Syria – one year on
The Documentary Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 17 February 2024
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
When we first reported on the earthquake in February 2023, the scale was overwhelming. We heard from families who had escaped as buildings around them collapsed and rescue workers described the devastation as the worst they had ever seen. Each day the casualty figures mounted. It is now thought that at least 55,000 people died.
A year on, we have been catching-up with survivors to hear how their lives have changed. One family – Iman, Karim and their 7-year-old daughter Nada – had fled from the war in Syria to have a new life in Turkey. They lost family, friends and their home in the earthquake.
When host James Reynolds called the family up in the last few days, they told him they were doing much better. Young Nada, however, is still having nightmares about the floor shaking and people she has lost.
“I have a dream about my friend Iman, she died from the earthquake,” Nada tells James. “I’m so sad about her, and I have a friend who moved to Canada – I miss her so much.”
We also hear messages from BBC listeners in Turkey and reunite with Harun, an English teacher in southern Turkey, and Bilal who is living in the east of the country and had his business destroyed last year.
A Boffin Media production in partnership with the BBC OS team.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | In 1969, a plan to show support for an anti-racism protest turned the lives of 14 promising |
| 0:07.0 | black student athletes upside down. |
| 0:09.8 | Amazing sport stories from the BBC World Service tells their story. |
| 0:14.0 | Search for Amazing Sports Stories, wherever you get your BBC podcasts. |
| 0:18.0 | Hello, I'm James Reynolds. |
| 0:20.0 | Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:23.7 | In BBC OS conversations we bring people together to share their experiences. |
| 0:28.1 | This time we catch up with survivors of last year's earthquake in Turkey and Syria. |
| 0:34.0 | While the news agenda moves on pretty quickly, for people caught in a disaster, |
| 0:39.0 | the physical, the psychological effects can last a lifetime. |
| 0:42.0 | We get back in touch with a Syrian family. the psychological effects can last a lifetime. |
| 0:43.0 | We get back in touch with a Syrian family who lost the people they love, |
| 0:47.0 | as well as their homes. |
| 0:48.0 | Harun, a teacher, tells us how he has come to terms |
| 0:51.0 | with the deaths of students and colleagues. |
| 0:54.3 | We should have to live without the people that we lost in Earthic. |
| 1:01.6 | We can just wish them in the heaven. |
| 1:07.0 | This time last year and it doesn't seem that long ago we were reporting on the aftermath of the earthquake that struck |
| 1:14.7 | southeastern Turkey near the border with Syria on the 6th of February. The haunting images showed |
| 1:20.4 | entire neighborhoods flattened to towering piles of concrete and amid days of |
| 1:25.1 | terrifying aftershocks there was an effort to reach survivors buried under the |
| 1:29.5 | debris and each day those casualty figures went up and up, it's now thought that at least 55,000 people lost their lives. |
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