Turkey earthquake: Still searching for missing loved ones

Ahmet Ceylanguden believed he would find his brother-in-law either in a hospital's intensive care unit or among the dead bodies. Unfortunately, it turned out to be the latter.

Eleven days after Turkey was struck by twin earthquakes on February 6, Ceylanguden received a phone call from the public prosecutor’s office. They had identified Yilmaz’s body by his fingerprints.

His body was found buried underneath the rubble of the building where he had lived in Turkey’s southeastern Hatay province.

Ceylanguden had kept a vigil in front of the destroyed apartment block until the debris was totally removed. But many of the bodies pulled out during the recovery process were unrecognizable, he said. He had almost given up hope of discovering Yilmaz’s fate.

"They also sent us photos of his body and a watch and a lighter," he told DW. "The items belonged to my brother-in-law. We could not look at the photos of his dead body."

The earthquake victim is currently buried in a mass grave in Hatay's Narlica district along with thousands of unidentified people. "In the next days, we will move him to our family cemetery," Ahmet Ceylanguden said, bursting into tears.

Yilmaz’s wife Gulcan was rescued alive from the collapsed building where nearly 60 people died. In hospital, doctors later amputated both her arms and one of her legs because they were gangrenous.     

Quake hit Hatay's buildings hard

According to figures released by the Turkish Interior Ministry on Thursday, the current death toll stands at 43,556, with tens of thousands homeless or displaced. But a report by the Turkish Enterprise and Business Confederation calculated that the number of people killed in the quakes is likely to exceed 72,000.

For now, many are still missing, and the exact number is uncertain. Turkish authorities told DW they were unable to provide an estimation of how many earthquake victims were unaccounted for.

Turkey's Hatay province is eerily quiet. As of February 20, just over 21,000 people in the province had lost their lives with nearly 2,000 of them unidentified, the Hatay Public Prosecutor's Office told DW.

More buildings collapsed in Hatay than in any of the 11 provinces hit by the earthquake, according to an assessment by Turkey's Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change ministry.

Most of the destroyed buildings and resulting rubble in Hatay have now been combed through by officials. Now people here, as elsewhere in Turkey, are searching for their missing loved ones in hospitals or mass graves.

After recording the victims' fingerprints and taking their DNA samples, unidentified bodies are being buried within 24 hours, according to the Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD).

Sister still looking for her 24-year-old brother

Tugba Akyuz is one of those still looking. She hopes to find her 24-year-old brother, Mustafa Batuhan Gulec, who was living alone in an apartment building in Hatay’s Iskenderun district.   

Akyuz managed to arrive at the scene just 20 minutes after the earthquake hit.

"We saw the collapsed building,” she told DW. "My brother lived on the fifth floor. His car was there. A phone signal was received from the apartment. Security surveillance cameras didn’t show any footage after the quake."

Akyuz said her family assumed Gulec was trapped under the rubble. But when the debris was completely removed eight days after the earthquake, he wasn’t found, dead or alive.

Her father has given authorities DNA samples for identification, Akyuz said. In the meantime, the family continues to post on social media and call authorities and hospitals every day.

"A pediatrician from Iskenderun State Hospital called me," Akyuz recounted. "She said she saw someone looking similar to my brother who asked for water, but she wasn’t 100% sure if the guy was him or not."

She and her family still haven’t given up hope.

Edited by: Kate Hairsine