What Remained After Loss: Zühal Bahar’s Story of Holding Life Together
What Remained After Loss: Zühal Bahar’s Story of Holding Life Together
February 19, 2026 | Sedanur Albaş
Zühal Bahar began her entrepreneurial journey in Nurdağı, a district of Gaziantep, Türkiye, by working from home to support her family’s income. She prepared and sold local dishes and started sewing for people around her using the skills she had learned in a course.
Everything changed after the February 6, 2023, earthquakes. Zühal lost her husband, and her home was badly damaged, leaving her alone with three children and no stable place to live or source of income. She spent around three and a half months living in a tent, followed by another year and a half in a container settlement. Despite the hardship, Zühal did not stop working. She used her sewing skills to volunteer, making simple items like bedsheets and pillows for others affected by the disaster. While helping those around her, she also began thinking about how to rebuild her own livelihood and support her children again.
At that point, Zühal realized she could not keep relying on temporary work and started to plan something more permanent. She increased production of traditional Gaziantep foods such as tomato paste, stuffed dishes, and mantı, saved money, and started selling through Instagram, building her first customer base online. Around the same time, a hair salon that had belonged to her husband before the earthquake, and had been demolished because the area was declared a reserve zone, was rebuilt by the authorities and returned to the family. This created a real opportunity for her to turn her plans into reality.
Two years after the earthquake, Zühal met Building Markets at the March 8th Women Entrepreneurs Festival organized as part of the Empowering Women-Owned MSEs in Earthquake-Affected Regions in Türkiye project, with the generous support of Islamic Relief USA. At the festival, she not only made sales but also met other women entrepreneurs and felt a sense of connection she had been missing since the earthquake. “At the event, more than the sales, I saw how hard women were trying,” Zühal says. “I realized I wasn’t alone, and that many women were fighting for their own lives.”
With support from the project’s mentorship sessions, Zühal opened her shop, Baharat Dünyası (“World of Spices”), selling locally made spices, coffee, sweets, and traditional foods. With continued support from Building Markets, she later completed the registration process and moved her work into the formal economy. She also applied for a grant program through Building Markets and successfully passed the first selection stage. While she is currently waiting for the final results, she says her income has increased by approximately 30% since receiving this support.
Alongside running her shop, Zühal enrolled in university, studying theology and medical secretarial services. She also manages an olive grove and sells her own 100% organic olive oil in the shop. As her business grew, she began selling online across Türkiye and strengthened her presence on e-commerce platforms with the help of trainings provided by Building Markets.
Looking ahead, she plans to invest in machinery to expand what she produces.
Today, Zühal hopes to open a second shop in the coming months and grow her business in Nurdağı in a way that creates work for others, especially women who need it most. Over time, she wants to bring other women into production and, one day, establish a cooperative that helps home-based producing women earn a steady income. In times of crisis, stories like Zühal’s show how supporting women’s work can have an impact that extends into families, livelihoods, and the future beyond the emergency.
This project is being implemented with the generous support of Islamic Relief USA. Any views expressed herein are solely those of Building Markets.
