Glen Ridge woman helping Turks recover from devastation wrought by earthquakes

GLEN RIDGE, NJ – A former Glen Ridge resident who returned to her native Turkey with her daughter at the end of December, five weeks before an unfathomable earthquake struck the country, has assisted in the relief effort and published her account on her website.

Eda Uzuncakara, formerly of Appleton Road, spoke from Turkey to The Glen Ridge Paper on Friday, March 31.
On Feb. 6, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake demolished areas in southeast Turkey along the Syrian border. An estimated 46,000 people were killed. Two weeks later, on Feb. 20, a 6.8 magnitude earthquake struck Turkey again, in its southern area, killing at least three people. Uzuncakara lives in Istanbul which is located in northwest Turkey, far from both wrecked areas. But its citizens still lamented.

“The people here were devastated,” she said. “Schools were suspended for two weeks because the news was so heartbreaking. People have relatives who were affected.”

Uzuncakara said the daily death toll, increasing exponentially as people became statistics, “was hard to digest.” She has an aunt who lived in the area, but survived. People, she said, found a way to leave the area, but some had nowhere to go. They live in tents and struggle.

Two days after the earthquake, Uzuncakara said her luggage, and that of her daughter, Ela Kilic, who attended Ridgewood Avenue School, arrived from America finally. When it did, they went through the contents and shipped some of it off to assist with relief efforts.
“I had packed the luggage months ago and it took another month for them to get here,” she said. “I thought to myself that I may like this clothing, but people needed it.”
And off it went.

“But this relief is a short-term solution,” Uzuncakara said. “We need to be sustainable communities. But the victims aren’t sustainable. We need to bring them back to that level.”

Uzuncakara left Istanbul on March 11 for areas hit hard along the Syrian border. She flew from Istanbul to Adana, a city in southern Turkey not far from the Mediterranean Sea, and then drove three hours into the southernmost part of Turkey. She assisted with the relief efforts in towns named Antakya and Samandag.
“The sad part,” she said, “is I saw trucks filled with junk and furniture of people moving. The towns were ghost towns. I saw curtains flying, but no windows. But still, the children were playing. Kids are kids, they have trauma, but their resilience is much more than adults.”

Uzuncakara said she did not see any of the dead because she came over a month after the earthquake, but she did hear about corpses having been everywhere and the need for special funeral clothing for Muslims.
She visited different sites and helped distribute food for various relief organizations and visited American hospitals. Her website, she said, was useful in communicating what people were experiencing. She was able to help for two days and will return in the summer after school ends. She was not sure if she will bring her daughter, who is 12, when she returns. But she spoke about the children she left behind.

“I can give them toys, but they wanted to be heard,” she said. “They wanted their stories to be heard so that they knew they existed and people cared.”
She saw a small girl balancing rocks on top of each other.

“Nothing is attached anymore,” Uzuncakara said. “I asked her if her rocks were holding together and she said yes. It was heartbreaking.”
She said children would come up to her and ask for a toy and she would wish she had come more prepared with more toys, but she had some.

“They wanted me to pick one for them,” she said. “They wanted to feel special.”
But when she offered them a toy, they would change their minds.
“It became a game to them,” she said. “Kids are kids. That’s what makes the world beautiful.”

Uzuncakara, who works remotely for a tech company and is under contract for several more months, said maybe it is the right time for her to be back in her home country.
Uzuncakara website: sparksinshadows.com