According to him, a picture of a father clutching his dead daughter’s hand after the Turkish earthquake on February 6 sparked an international outpouring of sympathy and support.
Adem Altan, an AFP photographer, found Mesut Hancer in the Turkish city of Ankara about three weeks after the catastrophe that claimed the lives of over 44,000 people in Turkey and thousands more in neighboring Syria.
He had relocated from Kahramanmaras, which was close to the epicenter of the earthquake.
As well as his daughter, lost under the ruins of an eight-storey block of flats, “I lost my mother, my brothers, my nephews in the quake,” Hancer said.
“But nothing compares to burying a child. The pain is indescribable.”
As he emerged from the wreckage, Hancer was seen holding his daughter’s hand and wearing an orange jacket to protect him from the rain and cold. This picture appeared on many newspaper front pages and was viewed millions of times online.
It came to represent a catastrophe that claimed tens of thousands of lives and brought particular focus to his family.
The former baker has now been promised an administrative position at the TV channel by Turkish businessman Necat Gulseven and his wife, the well-known singer Ebru Yasar, who also gave the family an apartment in Ankara.
Meanwhile a painting of Hancer’s daughter Irmak as an angel alongside her father, donated by an artist, hangs in their living room.
“I couldn’t let go of her hand. My daughter was sleeping like an angel in her bed,” he recalled.
