Some homeowners received apartments from TOKI sites, but this often meant taking on mortgage loans and dealing with financial stress. Those without such opportunities faced tough choices: relocating to other cities (only to return due to various challenges), moving back into their damaged homes, or remaining in the container cities.
One such container city was Anatolian Container City, initially intended as a temporary refuge. Three years after the earthquake, under the organization of the "Art for Van" project, I teamed up with my longtime friend Merve Nebioğlu, a civil rights worker and in February 2014, we traveled to Van to conduct a participatory project and workshops with children.
At that time, Anatolian Container City, which had once accommodated 3,000 people, still housed 46 families. Our young participants, aged 5-12, shared their dreams, memories (both good and bad), and their experiences living in the container city. A recurring theme in our discussions was their longing for a real home. The children were careful not to refer to the containers as 'home,' even correcting each other if someone did so by mistake.
Merve and I decided to focus on this yearning and aimed to create a positive memory associated with their containers. For the final project, we selected significant memories the children had shared and reenacted these moments and photographed them. The children then drew on printed photos to complete the pictures, adding missing elements. If a memory was painful, they transformed it into a story where they emerged feeling better and stronger.
