Ebru Ozturk, from Salisbury, travelled on Thursday to Kahramanmaraş, one of the southern Turkish provinces hardest hit by Monday’s devastating earthquakes, where her 49-year-old brother, Hakan, is missing and presumed to be under rubble after his block of flats collapsed.
“I am travelling with my brother’s two teenage children, aged 15 and 17, and his ex-wife, who live in England,” Ozturk said. “They wanted to visit him this summer. Half of the city is destroyed now and it’s all chaos. [During a visit] last month, I stayed in three different houses in the city. All three have fallen.”
She said family members, soldiers, volunteers and rescue workers from Afad, the Turkish disaster agency responsible for dealing with the aftermath of earthquakes, had been involved in attempting to rescue her brother and other people from the same block. Their work had been repeatedly interrupted when they were called away to attend to other ruins where people could be heard screaming for help.
“My brother lived in our childhood apartment on the fifth floor of a seven-storey building. Three people from the same building have been rescued so far, and some parts of my brother’s flat, some rooms, have been [dug out]. We have a big dinner table, and I think he might be under there. But there is not enough help: I’ve been told by people there that you could hear voices [from under the ruins], but people are standing around [helplessly] because you need special equipment.”
Ozturk, various other family members and neighbours are communicating via a WhatsApp group where people share details of the rescue mission’s progress, identify objects retrieved from the debris and exchange suggestions that may aid the search.
“Is that blood in front of you, Murat?” read one message in response to a picture shared on Thursday afternoon. Thankfully, it turned out to be dug-up earth.
“They can’t reach the table, as far as I understand, the ceiling has collapsed,” read another message.
When her brother’s empty bed was found, the possibility was raised that Hakan could have made it out of the flat and might be in a hospital somewhere.
But shortly thereafter, the group discovered that the last location signal from Hakan’s mobile phone was recorded at his home address at 3.51am on Monday, shortly before the first tremor.
“I’m hoping for a miracle,” one person wrote. Several hours later, rubble was being loaded on to vehicles, but there had been no progress.
In some places on Thursday, rescuers continued to pull out people who had been trapped for days, including a young girl. But by Friday morning, hopes were fading of finding more survivors .
“The weather conditions are very bad,” Ozturk said. “They have pulled frozen bodies from the rubble, people are suffering, looting shops as there is no food. They stand in the street next to fires.
“My mother and father travelled 14 hours by car and got [to the site of the collapsed apartment block] later on Monday, but they had to go back as it was very cold, they couldn’t do anything and there was nowhere for them to go. They are just hoping he can be found, alive or dead.”
She said anger was gripping the nation, and people were questioning how billions of funds raised by an “earthquake tax”, introduced after a poor government response to the catastrophic İzmit quake in 1999, had been used over the past two decades.
Many newer buildings erected during a construction boom that became a hallmark of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the AKP’s rule failed to withstand Monday’s tremors and crumbled, raising suspicions that corners were cut during construction.
“People are angry. How can all these new buildings be knocked down, when countries like Japan can build [earthquake-resistant] houses? The government are closing their ears, these rescue efforts are badly organised,” Ozturk said.
“Turkey needs international help, our government can’t be trusted. Many kids are without a mother or father now. I’m not just asking for help for my brother but for my people, my country.”
