It's a supersoup during this humanitarian crisis. Easy to make, it warms the displaced, fuels rescue crews and comforts residents traumatized by the disaster.
Turkish authorities say a magnitude 6.4 earthquake, followed by a magnitude 5.8 tremor, struck the Antakya region around 8 p.m. local time Monday. The quake was also felt in Syria.
As Turkey's leaders promise a swift start to reconstruction efforts in the earthquake zone, attention is also turning to Istanbul — and whether Turkey's largest city is ready for a major quake.
NPR follows one of the hundreds of building inspectors in Turkey's earthquake zone to learn about the massive challenge of figuring how who can return to their homes.
Appeals for aid to Syria were falling short even before this month. Aid groups are trying to marshal more aid pledges while attention is still on the quakes, but the road to recovery will be long.
Even as the death toll in Turkey and Syria has risen to more than 43,000, search teams in southern Turkey have rescued a few people who were trapped in the debris, including a 12-year-old boy.
Even as rescuers rush to arrive, it's often locals who can best offer immediate help, experts say. And they say governments in devastated areas often fail to realize the scope and respond immediately.
With so many killed suddenly in the quake, Turkey faces the challenge of burying tens of thousands of people. Multiple funerals are happening at once and the process of burying the dead is constant.
As volunteers continue digging through the rubble of a collapsed apartment building, the siblings of a woman found dead with her four children are now awaiting news of their mother and another sister.
Videos have surfaced in Turkish media of the president in 2019 praising a policy that let builders off the hook for skirting safety codes that could have made buildings more quake resistant.
People buried under rubble in southern Turkey continue to defy the odds, surviving freezing weather and a week without water. A 40-year-old woman was pulled alive in Gaziantep province early Monday.
In northern Syria, people already displaced by civil war are now suffering from the effects of this week's earthquake. But aid has been unable to reach them.
As rescuers still pulled some from the rubble, Turkish officials detained those allegedly involved in constructing buildings that toppled down and crushed their occupants.
In the southern Turkish city of Osmaniye, people squeeze into tents or sleep in cars near their damaged homes nearly a week after the massive earthquake struck.
