In an apartment in Reyhanli, a Turkish town on the Syrian border, a dozen friends are sitting on mattresses on the floor, chatting over tea and smoking cigarettes. The lives of these Syrians changed again with the February 6 earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria, killing more than 40,000 people. In Hatay province, where they make up 20% of the population, Syrian refugees have many victims. These young men in their 20s, former revolutionaries whose surnames are kept secret for security reasons, fled the war in Syria. You’ve lost everything again. “We don’t know where life will take us,” says Mohamed fatalistically.
Bab Al-Hawa border post between Turkey and Syria. Thousands of Syrian refugees are waiting to return to Syria on February 16, 2023. WILLIAM KEO / MAGNUM FOR “THE WORLD” 
Mohammed, in the middle, a young Syrian from Aleppo, wants to join his family in Idlib at the Bab Al-Hawa border crossing in Turkey on February 16, 2023. WILLIAM KEO/MAGNUM FOR THE WORLD
He and his friend Souhaib hurry up. Their families are waiting in Antakya for them to settle in Mersin with the few belongings they salvaged from the rubble. Ahmad, a car salesman, sent his parents to his brother’s house in Ankara to find an apartment in Reyhanli. The Turkish government has allowed Syrian refugees living in quake-hit provinces to settle in other regions except Istanbul over the next three months. Those who have relatives or enough money to rent an apartment elsewhere go on their own. “The government is facilitating the evacuation of the Turks, we have to take care of that,” Abdelaziz complains.
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Another young man named Ahmad has moved into this apartment that Mohamed rents. The latter pulled it out of the rubble three days after the earthquake. Ahmad no longer has a phone, no money, not even his identity papers or his university degree. For six days, Mohamed and seven friends took almost a hundred people out of buildings in Antakya – nine of them were alive – and transported the bodies of 200 Syrians to the border. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, more than 1,200 remains were transported to Syria for burial. Once the young man was harassed by Turkish rescuers who believed he was looting the apartments.
racism
On two other occasions, hostile residents prevented him from delivering relief supplies to the camps. Anti-Syrian racism, fueled by the economic crisis in recent years and scapegoating 3.7 million refugees, has exploded since the earthquake. In Antakya, the atmosphere is toxic. “There are Syrians who steal everything. The government has to send them back to their country or to Europe. They are changing the demographic structure of the country,” accuses Kazem Kuseyri, the owner of Hotel Savon.
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