ERZIN, Turkey — Death and destruction surround Erzin.
But this small town in Turkey’s southern Hatay province is an oasis of safety and normality, while last week’s earthquake upended life across the region.
Residents and officials say Erzin suffered no deaths or saw any buildings collapse in the powerful temblor, crediting a longstanding determination not to allow construction that violated the country’s codes.
Beyaz Yalcin was one of the lucky ones.
She was in Erzin with her four young children when the earthquake struck, rather than at home in nearby Gaziantep.
Yalcin, 33, has not returned home. He doesn’t know if his house is still standing or if, like so many in Gaziantep and throughout the region, it has been reduced to rubble.
“I’m in shock. I don’t want to face the same situation again,” he said.
Yalcin is not the only one who stays in this town out of fear.
Emre Tibikoglu, 39, who has been working for the municipality for six years, said he believed 20,000 people had come to Erzin since the quake, an increase of around 50% in the city’s population.
“We know that we are in an earthquake area,” he said, citing the insistence of the current and previous mayors not to allow buildings to be built that did not meet building codes.
Tibikoglu said that whenever officials noticed illegally constructed buildings, they would tear them down.
“Some local people were really angry about it,” he said of the residents living in those buildings. But he said the mayor stuck to his decision, knowing that a big earthquake could happen one day.
Tibikoglu said he wasn’t sure why other municipalities didn’t do the same, but suspected there might be connections between local politicians and contractors, saying stricter government regulations might have limited a large-scale tragedy.
He said there are also no high-rise buildings in Erzin, which lessens the risks, though he said he had heard that some buildings in the city were damaged to the point that it was not safe for people to stay there. The city may have escaped the devastation of neighboring areas, but the magnitude 7.8 quake was felt nonetheless.
Engineers in Turkey had been raising fears about poorly constructed buildings for years, given the country’s vulnerability to major earthquakes. Concerns rose after a 2018 law granted amnesty to buildings with illegal construction, allowing them to be used as long as the owners paid a fine to the state.
The government promised a thorough investigation and ordered the arrest of more than 100 people over the collapsed buildings, though opposition groups accused President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of failing to ensure regulations were properly enforced as anger over the issue grew.
Erzin is about 70 miles from the quake’s epicenter.
In towns further from the center, as well as nearby ones like Osmaniye, just 12 miles from Erzin, houses have been reduced to rubble and those who survived are still struggling for help.
Some have gone to Erzin seeking refuge with relatives.
Mountains and hills surround Erzin, something the locals believe has protected them.
