Driving on the roads of Turkey's far south, between Hatay, Kahramanmaras and Adiyaman, is like breaking into a devastated and emptied region, still groggy from the magnitude of the disaster and its failures. Over 400 kilometers of this land was hit by an earthquake on February 6, 2023, and was victim to its countless aftershocks. All around are building sites, ruins, container cities, a few tents – often placed on top of containers to compensate for leaks – and housing blocks with cranes, trucks and construction workers.

12 months of clearing, repair and construction work have barely been enough to clear the streets full of rubble. Work is 95% complete in Hatay and 85% in Kahramanmaras. There's also the impression of enduring insecurity, a vanished workforce and neighborhoods gone forever. On February 3 and 4, right here and with great fanfare under the auspices of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a lottery was launched for the first 7,000 brand-new homes, available in a few weeks or several months, and whose keys will be symbolically handed over. This poorly masks the enormity of the tasks yet to be completed to regain even a semblance of normality.

Information and figures obtained from local authorities paint a picture of a sustained effort but a slow process, with grey areas and vague deadlines. No one here has forgotten May 12, 2023 – two days before the first round of the presidential election – when President Erdogan claimed, during a televised debate broadcast by virtually all of Turkey's channels, to have "started the process of building 142,000 residences and village houses, hoping to complete 319,000 within a year." Turkey is not even close.

At the last count, the number of victims of the disaster stood at 53,537 dead and 107,213 injured, according to the Interior Ministry. Nearly half of the missing are thought to have died in Hatay, and just under a third in Kahramanmaras. For many, however, these figures are still underestimates. Last week, Murat Kurum, the government candidate in the March Istanbul municipal elections and until recently minister for the environment and urbanization, spoke on camera of the deaths of "130,000 people." It was an announcement that did little to clarify the situation.

According to the authorities, more than 680,000 homes, offices and other buildings were wiped out or damaged. Almost 29% of the population in the 11 disaster-stricken regions has been forced to move – a migration that still hasn't stabilized. 1,000,000 people are still living in temporary shelters. In Hatay alone, according to the local governorate, of 563,000 people who left the province of ancient Antioch, 129,000 have still not returned.

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