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How town at the epicentre of Turkey’s 1999 earthquake was rebuilt

In August 1999, the small town of Golcuk was the epicentre of a magnitude-7.4 earthquake that rocked Kocaeli province and the wider Marmara area. Thousands of buildings crumbled and more than 17,000 people died. The devastation, however, was followed by a systematic reconstruction process that has since transformed Golcuk into “the Paris of Kocaeli” – as some residents call it, with a touch of pride – and a perceived safe haven in a country that is regularly blighted by earthquake disasters.