The sound of music from an antique shop, where the Turkish flag hangs, brings hope to the earthquake-ravaged city of Antakya as it mourns the dead.
The fabled city, historically known as Antioch, and located between the Mediterranean Sea and Turkey’s border with Syria, experienced a magnitude 7.8 earthquake on February 6 that killed more than 50,000 people.
The domes of mosques and churches sit above the ghost town, which straddles one of the world’s most active fault lines and rises like a phoenix from similar disasters over the centuries.
If it happens again, it’s not a little because of the steadfast citizens like Serkan Sincan.
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Resting on one of the two armchairs set up on the sidewalk next to a coffee table, the 51-year-old person has Turkey’s resilience in the face of the country’s worst natural disaster in modern times.
When the ground started convulsing at 4:17 am, Sincan managed to evict his mother and father from the flat, move to a safer city and help his neighbors get out of the house.
“On the third day, I came here and opened the big flag first,” Sincan told AFP.
“It’s raining. I saw a friend on the street, he said ‘Serkan, your antique shop is down’. I said ‘Ok, I’ll see’. When I was walking, I saw that the Ulu Mosque had collapsed, the Protestant church was down, everything was down,” he said.
“Then I saw my building.”
-‘Prayer stops in Turkey’-
It was still standing, only suffering a few cracks in its walls. Some shop plates were broken and some books were scattered on the floor.
“But the house is still standing and I say to myself: Allahuakbar’ (God is great).
WATCH: Earthquake in Turkey
Sincan, who quit working in the city’s municipality almost five years ago because “I don’t like the system”, describes himself as an “Islamic socialist”.
Enraged that the daily call to prayer issued by the muezzin went silent after the earthquake, he began to walk the apocalyptic streets and sing to himself.
“Prayers stopped in Antakya. Muezzins ran away from the temple of God,” he said.
“I sleep in this building. I make the call to prayer. People say I’m crazy”.
Clearly, not everyone does.
Last week, workers built an emergency power line into the store so they could play music – everything from opera and Turkish ballads to old Pink Floyd tunes.
– ‘I give you hope’ –
“This is our routine. In the past, my customers knew that I played tapes and records. This is how my shop works,” he said.
Now, after cleaning the streets and setting up lounge chairs, he serves coffee and treats to anyone who stops by his shop – mostly volunteers, municipal workers and charity organizers who came to Antakya after the earthquake.
Ozge Eser, a teacher whose building collapsed, said the sight of Sincan’s open shop made him happy.
“I came here a day before the earthquake. I bought child development books and law books for my sister, who is a lawyer,” she said.
“I’m so happy to see it open. It really gives me hope at a time when I’ve lost hope.
A portrait of Turkey’s founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk hangs on the shop’s front wall.
Ataturk wanted the city’s Hatay province to become part of Turkey after the post-Ottoman war of independence 100 years ago.
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The province was fully annexed in 1939, a year after Ataturk’s death, with the last remnants of French mandate authority leaving.
Expanding on President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s promise to rebuild the entire earthquake-stricken area within a year, Sincan is confident that Antakya will return to its glory.
“One or a half years from now, old Antakya will be better and better,” he said.