International Women's Day: Three women in Turkey I’ll never forget

By Shagufta Yaqub
8 March 2024

Zeynep had broken her back when a wall collapsed on her during the earthquake that hit Turkey in February last year. Yet she was still the backbone of her family, holding it together for everyone through immense pain, physical and emotional turmoil. This International Women’s Day I want to share the stories of three women who are putting others first, despite their own challenges.

I met Zeynep while visiting some of the areas worst affected by the devastating earthquakes in which over 56,000 people lost their lives and 300,000 buildings were destroyed across southern Turkey and northwest Syria.

What struck me most about Zeynep was her gratitude for what she had, even in the face of heartbreaking adversity. With little more than a few belongings in a tent pitched on the site of her former two-storey home, she told me she had everything. As an aid worker I couldn’t comprehend this. Now would be the moment for her to tell the Turkish Red Crescent team I was accompanying that she needed more help in addition to the DEC-funded food vouchers she’d already received. But as a mother I think I understood what she meant. She had her family, and that meant she had everything.

“Thank God all my children survived. I don’t know what I’d do if I lost them,” - ZEYNEP.

Zeynep was still in physical pain as she spoke, quietly wiping away her involuntary tears. She had only recently been able to stand up following complex spinal surgery. Buried under the rubble for hours in her remote, hilltop village, she was lucky her neighbours had managed to rescue her and keep her warm on that freezing February morning when the earthquakes hit.

“It’s not my place to ask for more,” Zeynep said, although she reluctantly confessed she was worried that her children were hungry, thirsty and needed clothes. “If they are hungry I feel miserable,” she said. Still, she spoke nothing of her own needs.

The theme for International Women’s Day this year is ‘inclusion’ and meeting women like Zeynep reminds me how often women make so much space for everyone else in their lives, putting others first, even in a world that doesn’t always do the same for them. It is not an easy thing to do, especially in the face of disaster when lives are turned upside down in seconds.

“I want to be a good mother,” one woman told me anonymously after a counselling session supported by DEC charity International Rescue Committee in Gaziantep. Ever since the earthquakes she had become short-tempered and she was worried her eight-year-old son had become withdrawn.

“I get easily annoyed at things. I want things to be in order in the house but I can’t. There are six of us living in the container,” she said.

It was deeply upsetting this 31-year-old mother that by her standards, she was not being the very best mother she could be. But it was only when the camera was put away and there were no men in the room that she shared more of her story. She had been living with her mother-and father-in-law when the earthquakes destroyed their home. It took them a week to pull their bodies out from under the rubble. The family then sheltered in a tent with mud everywhere, no toilets, showers or electricity. She couldn’t cook, or send the children to school. Yet she feels she should be doing better. And then she shared something of her own childhood.

"Life will be better if I can apply what I’m learning in therapy."

“I don’t remember much from when I was young but my father used to hit me,” she said. “I don’t want to repeat what happened to me. I want to be a good mother and help my children. I want to soften my sharp side and change for the better.”

Every person affected by the earthquakes - the biggest to hit the region in 80 years - has a story beyond just being an earthquake survivor in need of aid. In another camp, where displaced people were still living in tents during the summer heatwave, I met Rama, an aid worker who knows some of these stories all too well.

Walking through the camps at the epicentre of the earthquake in Kahramanmaraş where she works as a Public Health Officer with Oxfam KEDV, Rama greets families with a warm smile, asks how they are and what she can do for them. She is cheerful and compassionate, and the camp residents know her by name as she is their first point of call when they need help. Women especially are comfortable talking to her about their needs.

“We provide hygiene items including menstruation packs, nappies for babies, and dignity kits for people with incontinence,” she told me.“We always work with the community, and they are really happy to know someone will listen.”

Rama is a civil engineer by training but it’s clear that aid work is her calling. I was surprised to learn her own story, that she and her family went through incredibly traumatic experiences in Syria before they came to Turkey two years before the earthquake. Perhaps this gives her a closer connection to the people she is helping.

"I really like the smile on someone’s face when I give them something they need," - rama 

“Thank you for making people’s lives better and making them feel like they’re home again. Of course, it’s not like home - they’re living in camps - but at least they’re facing fewer difficulties.”

As I left Turkey I carried with me the words of these inspiring women who perhaps would not have shared their stories or voiced their concerns if they had not been asked, because for them doing the very best they can to care for others is just part of what they do. Striving in some of the most challenging circumstances day in and day out, while putting others first - these are the women I want to celebrate this International Women’s Day.

Shagufta Yaqub is Content and Communications Manager at the DEC.