ANTAKYA, Turkey — A bone stuck out of the rubble.

It might not be human, one of the Turkish drivers reassured the One Kingdom disaster relief staff.

Yet standing on top of what used to be multiple apartment complexes, the team from the White’s Ferry Road Church of Christ ministry in West Monroe, La., had its doubts. 

READ: Christian Organizations Provide Relief In Southern Turkey After Earthquake

“You know that it’s not just rubble,” said Beverly Dobbs, a One Kingdom staff member who traveled nearly 7,000 miles to document relief efforts. “You’re standing on people’s lives, everything that they had and — for many of them — their loved ones. It is really overwhelming.” 

Since a devastating 7.8 magnitude earthquake last year killed more than 53,000 people and displaced some 3 million residents according to Turkey’s Interior Ministry, recovery has been slow. 

Buildings, unstable and deteriorating, await bulldozing. Broken concrete forms piles where families used to live. People — bodies unidentified or unfound — remain missing.

Ramazan Arkan, minister for a church that received financial support from One Kingdom, helped pull people from the rubble after the Feb. 6, 2023, quake. 

“Everywhere smelled like death,” Arkan recalled. “When we were in the camp providing food for people that first week, maybe every five minutes there was some scream and people crying. They’d heard the news that their mom or dad or somebody is dead.”

More than a year later, the city is quiet, often only disrupted by the sound of construction equipment. 

Nearly 106,000 buildings inspected by Turkey’s Environment and Urbanization Ministry in the 11 provinces affected by the earthquake were destroyed or irreparably damaged, the ministry reported. 

In Antakya, the seat of Hatay Province, 80% of buildings were deemed structurally unsound and slated for demolition, according to Hatay Mayor Lutfu Savas.

“In this community, it’s profoundly silent,” Dobbs said. “I think that part of what overwhelms me was the lack of joy. You wonder how in the world do you restore hope in a community that’s lost so much.” 

Click to scroll photos by Audrey Jackson

‘The church worked through us’

Yet, hope grows among the survivors.

Women visit in the streets of temporary housing established by İlk Umut Derneği — First Hope Association in English. Children ride bicycles and kick soccer balls in between the container homes after school. 

The faith-based nonprofit also offers clinics and mental health counseling to the temporary housing residents. It is one of several foreign ministries supported by One Kingdom, which formed with the 2017 merger of White’s Ferry Road Relief and World Radio.

Turkey has a minuscule Protestant and evangelical Christian population of 7,000 to 10,000 members among the 83 million population, according to 2022 estimates from the U.S. State Department. Still, Christians were among the first to mobilize in response to the disaster.

Workers with İlk Umut Derneği aided in search and rescue, established a field hospital with Samaritan’s Purse and provided mobile hygiene units. 

Demokan Kileci, İlk Umut Derneği’s chairman of the board and a Christian, was one of the first to respond to the destruction in Antakya, driving through aftershocks to reach devastated areas. 

Robert Ables, co-director of One Kingdom, was shocked when he contacted Kileci from the U.S. upon hearing news of the disaster.

“He answered me on FaceTime, and he was in the car,” said Ables, who is also a White’s Ferry Road elder. “I was seeing him, seeing his face, as he was struggling to comprehend what he was going to be facing. He was already on the road within an hour and a half. The sun hadn’t even come up yet.”

Kileci wasn’t alone — churches from across Turkey sent volunteers to aid İlk Umut Derneği, the Turkish Red Crescent and AFAD, the country’s disaster management agency.

“The church worked through us, believe it or not,” Kileci said, noting the volunteers from Arkan’s church — the Antalya Evangelical Church — and other congregations.

“Christians, we are called to respond any time there is a need,” he added. “Because those are the times that we have the opportunity to reflect Jesus Christ. There are no actual agendas for us. Our only agenda is to reflect his love and heart.”

A new foundation 

Arkan and another minister with the Antalya Evangelical Church, Özgür Uludağ, spent weeks living out of their church’s van while volunteering.

For six weeks they camped in Adıyaman, a city with a majority Kurdish population, spending their days passing out aid and their evenings drinking tea with people in the tent communities. 

“Because we sat around the same fire together, we smelled like them,” Uludağ said. “We were sleepless just like them. We looked homeless.

“They said, ‘The other organizations treat us like we have a contagious disease,’” Uludağ recalled. “‘They just leave bags over there. You came to us to drink tea, to talk with us.’ 

“Many people mentioned that no one was listening to them,” he added. “They felt truly alone and helpless. Even the fact that we listened to them and prayed was a great support.”

The Antalya ministers plan to partner with the Diyarbakır Protestant Church to plant an evangelical  congregation — the first in the city. 

“The earthquake happened in the eastern part of Turkey, one of the hardest parts of Turkey for sharing the gospel message,” Arkan said. “The earthquake opened the way for churches to be a witness in that area, for many people to receive help from us, and that changed the reputation of the church.”

Yet most of the Turkish Christians said they don’t expect to see mass conversions anytime soon.  

“A lot of people lost their lives,” Kileci said. “There’s a lot of pain and agony, and we share that. I think in the midst of everything, God is really revealing himself with good work, good deeds, right now, and more individual results will come out of this.

“Right now it’s the period where we throw the seeds,” he added. “It’s in his season and in his timing that we will see those sprout and grow.”

But human timing does not concern the One Kingdom team.  

Compassion must come first in a disaster, Dobbs said.

“When they see and feel the love, then down the line, there’s time for conversation,” she said. “I can’t go in there with the intention of assessing where they are spiritually first. We have to meet their needs first — and sometimes meeting their needs takes a long time.”

Audrey Jackson traveled to Turkey to report this story through a partnership between The Christian Chronicle and ReligionUnplugged.com.