Ancient antioch survived disaster in 2,400 years, destroyed in Turkey earthquake

Four weeks ago, Antakya was a bustling regional capital of 400,000 people sandwiched between the Mediterranean Sea and Turkey’s mountainous border with Syria, known for its spicy cuisine and centuries-old churches, synagogues and mosques.

Today the city, formerly known as Antioch, is a moonscape of broken concrete where stray dogs scavenge among the ruins and the few remaining residents huddle together in tents dotting the grass of a riverside park. Turkish soldiers in blue berets patrol the streets, their submachine guns covered in dust from mountains of rubble.

Antakya and the surrounding province of Hatay suffered some of the worst destructruction of the double earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria on Feb. 6, killing more than 51,000 people and leaving countless others still missing. At least half the city’s buildings were destroyed in the initial earthquakes of magnitude 7.8 and 7.5; still others fell in a 6.4 quake on Feb. 20. Some 80% of Hatay’s buildings need to be demolished, according to the region’s mayor.

Throughout the old city are destroyed buildings, including the historic Greek Orthodox Church and a mosque built in the early 1700s. Nearby the Habib al-Najjar Mosque lies in ruins. It was the first Muslim place of worship built in Anatolia, erected nearly 1,500 years ago. Destroyed by an earthquake and rebuilt in the 19th century, it is devastated again, its minaret is now toppled, its dome caved in, its walls cracked.

Most of Antakya’s people have fled, piling into cars and government buses that rumble away every few minutes from an evacuation center in a mud parking lot at the edge of town. The city has no running water, no electricity, no heating, no shops selling food, and no immediate prospects of returning to a normal life.

“Antakya left me, and I will never go back," said Josef Naseh, 69 years old, a Syrian Christian archaeologist who was born and lived his whole life here, much of it in a stone house with a courtyard planted with orange and lemon trees. “That holy place cannot be rebuilt."

The near-total destruction of Antakya is a devastating blow for Turkey and the wider Middle East. Home to Turkish Muslims, Christians and Jews, the city sustained an Old-World multiculturalism and sense of interreligious solidarity that has faded elsewhere during a century of nationalist rule in modern Turkey and decades of colonial war and sectarian militancy across the Middle East.

Even before the 2011 uprising and civil war in Syria that pushed more than three million refugees to settle in Turkey, many residents of Hatay province spoke both Turkish and Arabic, unique in a country where President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and many other elites are proudly monolingual.

“We grew up all in the same streets. Nobody said this is Christian, this is Muslim, this is Alewite, this is Sunni," said Cemil Baklaci, a 32-year-old engineer from Antakya, who is Arab and a member of the Alevi branch of Islam. “If I had been born in the next house over, I’d be Christian," he said, walking amid the ruined home of Antakya’s old city last week.

The earthquakes unraveled that existence. The city’s entire Jewish community of some 20 people has fled, potentially ending the continuous practice of Judaism that dates back more than two millennia in Antakya. The leader of the community and his wife both died. They were buried days later in Istanbul, where other Antakya Jews have settled.

Others have left too, including nearly all of the city’s Christian Greek Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant communities; Arab Alevis; tens of thousands of Syrian refugees; and hundreds of thousands of Sunni Muslim Turks who lived among them, according to religious leaders and members of the communities.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has vowed to rebuild the entire south of the country in one year, with construction beginning next month on 200,000 homes.

“We will build a new Antakya, Iskenderun, Arsuz. We will make these places from scratch," said Mr. Erdogan on Feb. 20.

Local officials, civil-society groups and business owners say they expect the city to be rebuilt in some form but fear it will lose some of its rich cultural character. They also worry that many residents will never return, and they are also skeptical of the government’s one-year timeline.

“Politicians speak like this all over the world. They speak about their intent. I’ll go to sleep with this nice dream," said Hikmet Cincin, the head of Antakya’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Founded on the banks of the Orontes River in 300 B.C.E. by one of Alexander the Great’s former generals, what’s now known as Antakya was once the capital of the Roman province of Syria. The empire built Antioch into a grand metropolis of theaters, aqueducts and baths. It was also an entrepôt for caravans linking Asia with the Mediterranean world in what would become known as the Silk Road. The apostles Peter and Paul made Antioch a center of their new religion, with cathedrals and churches springing up. It was there that their followers first became known as Christians.

Antakya has changed hands more than half a dozen times, ruled at different points by the Roman, Byzantine, Persian, Seljuk, classical Islamic, Ottoman and French empires, along with occupations by the crusaders and Mamluks. Each time, even after wars and sieges, the city has renewed itself.

After the fall of Rome in the fourth century, Antioch thrived under the Byzantine empire in what was then a world center of trade, military power, religion and state-building.

A series of disasters struck in the sixth and seventh centuries, including fires and plagues. In 526, ancient Antioch was destroyed in one of the worst earthquakes ever recorded, killing an estimated 250,000 people and sparking a fire that consumed the entire city. Byzantine historians described the catastrophe as a sign of divine wrath.

“Sparks of fire appeared from the sky, and burned as if by lightning the one they hit, and the surface of the earth boiled up, and the foundations thundered, and people were deafened by the shaking and incinerated by the fire," wrote John Malalas, a Byzantine chronicler who survived the earthquake.

More sixth-century earthquakes toppled Antioch’s great domed cathedral. The successive Byzantine emperors Justin I and Justinian I built new churches and basilicas, restored the city’s baths and paved the way for life to return. Though it would initially contract in size, it would remain important under the Islamic and Ottoman empires, a center of agriculture, industry, and trade on the route linking Syria and Anatolia, at the intersection of what is now thought of as the worlds of East and West.

Modern Antakya rose around Antioch’s ruins. The city built a prosperous existence on the surrounding rich farmland, producing fruits, vegetables, seeds and olive oil. Contemporary Hatay attracted intellectuals, shop owners, and restaurateurs drawn by the region’s warm climate and open-minded traditions. Turkish and foreign visitors flew in to tour its Roman frescoes and enjoy boutique hotels and Mediterranean beaches.

Over the past decade, Antakya also became a hub for Syrian rebels, arms dealers, aid workers, spies and diplomats shuttling to and from the war raging 20 miles away. Tens of thousands of Syrians settled in and around the city, living among the Arabic-speaking residents of a Turkish region that Syria once claimed as its own.

Now modern Antakya has suffered a trauma that rivals any in its history. The earthquakes carved a path of destruction through the modern city and its ancient core, toppling towers and pulverizing old stone buildings. Apartment blocks lay sideways, concrete floors rising like dinosaur spines.

Among the ruins are the remains of people’s lives: a couch, a bed. On the side of one building is an exposed wall with a painting of a tree and a balloon—a child’s bedroom that collapsed.

“This earthquake destroyed everything we hold so dear," said Francis Dondu, a Catholic priest from India who has lived in Turkey since 2007 and led a small congregation in Antakya’s old city.

After sleeping in his church courtyard for 10 days, shivering next to an open fire, he packed his bags and left, scrambling over the piles of toppled rocks outside on his way to the coastal city of Mersin. “People are united. We have been living in friendship," he said.

Across the street from the ruined Habib al-Najjar mosque, two men pulled bulbous glass and clay pots, impossibly intact and covered in dust, from the ruins of a shop that once sold soaps, olive oil and milk.

“Antakya will never be the same again," said Mitat Alkan, 48, who said he was helping a friend clear out his shop.

As he spoke, two police officers approached, asking that he produce papers to prove ownership of the building, launching an argument with the two men pawing through the rubble. Police have responded to scattered reports of looting across the earthquake zone.

Mr. Baklaci, the engineer, watched nearby, his eyes ringed from lack of sleep. Like many Antakyans, he is fiercely proud of his hometown and its history.

Born in Antakya, he moved away only to study engineering in the nearby port city of Iskenderun before returning for the rest of his adult life. During his wedding four years ago, he printed maps of the old city so visiting friends could enjoy a walking tour and admire the architecture of the old churches, mosques and coffeehouses.

Two nights before the Feb. 6 earthquake, Mr. Baklaci went to drink with friends in a bar on the second floor of an old building in the historic city center. The group stayed out late, wandering through the narrow streets and stopping for dessert at a sweet shop by the Orontes River.

One of those friends died in a fire after the earthquake. Others from that night out disappeared, likely crushed beneath the rubble, their bodies never found.

“I love Antakya," said Mr. Baklaci, who refuses to leave the city, living in a prefab container parked on a city street. “We had a good life here."

Mr. Naseh, the archaeologist, said his family, a clan of Christian stonemasons, left Syria in 1877 after an earthquake and settled in a house in Antakya with grape vines climbing the walls. A man with a white mustache and a round face, he liked to hold court in his office, expounding on the city’s history in a room of dark wood paneling. He phoned distant relatives in Syria to check on them during the war.

The Feb. 6 earthquake jolted him from sleep, sending him running outside. There, in a small municipal park, he lit a fire, remembering a skill from his days on archaeological digs. A dozen neighbors clung together under blankets grabbed from their homes, shivering in a winter rain.

The rising sun revealed the destruction around them, the light dawning on crumpled buildings and cars crushed by fallen concrete. A strange quiet set in. No traffic lights blinked. Few sirens wailed.

The earthquake damaged Hatay’s single airport, forcing rescue workers to jam their way onto a single highway leading up the mountain into Antakya, leaving thousands of people to claw through the rubble of their own homes in a search for the living while others stood in the street not knowing where to go.

“It was terrifying," said Mr. Naseh. “We were alone."

After two freezing and fearful days, Mr. Naseh jumped in a neighbor’s car and drove to a relative’s house next to the sea in Iskenderun where he is now staying. He had planned to live the rest of his days in Antakya. Now he can’t decide where to go.

The late afternoon light streamed through a window, reflecting off the Mediterranean Sea steps away. He sobbed, recounting his old life.

“The real devastation this earthquake created is in our minds," he said. “We need new people who can carry on the mythology, the faith, the culture in this land," he added. “We need people who will not erase all that."

Write to Jared Malsin at jared.malsin@wsj.com