‘The illegality is enormous’: Turkey’s quake cleanup may kill even more

A woman recoils from the dust as a bulldozer works to remove the damaged ruins of a church in Antakya’s old city, Hatay province, southern Turkey. Photograph: Bradley Secker/The Guardian

As the road winds around the Mediterranean coastline on the southern edge of Turkey’s Hatay province, the outline of what seems to be hills appear on the horizon. But as they loom closer it becomes clear these are hulking mountains of rubble, so big that they have their own topography, as heavy machinery sorting through the debris tucks into the many crevices.

A fine plume of pale dust blows behind a mechanical claw stripping out valuable metal from the concrete, a toxic cloud that drifts over the nearby beachfront restaurants as well as across a camp for people displaced by February’s deadly earthquakes.