A month after the quakes, a Turkish family wrestles with grief and anger

A month after the quakes, a Turkish family wrestles with grief and anger - The Washington Post
COPIAGUE, N.Y. — Zehra Karaoglu can’t stop replaying the day, a month ago on Monday, when she learned of the earthquakes in Turkey. After several hours, Karaoglu finally made contact with her mother. But no one had heard yet from Karaoglu’s brother, Mustafa. The family’s apartment building had collapsed after the 7.8-magnitude quake, they soon discovered, trapping Mustafa, his wife and their three boys under the rubble. Her mother would spend the next seven days amid the rubble, pacing from the front of the building to the back, desperately hoping for any signs of life from her son, daughter-in-law or three grandsons. “She said [for] four days, nothing happened,” Karaoglu said. “Four days, no help, nobody came.” As the family waited for rescuers, Karaoglu heard stories from those on the ground. A man with the name Mustafa was calling out for help, witnesses told her, saying his legs were trapped under a cement block. There was no way to know if it was her brother; there were three men by that name in the building. But when workers finally recovered her brother’s body, his legs were broken. “Somebody told me there was a kid’s voice” coming from the fifth floor, where her nephews lived, said Karaoglu. “They were screaming, they were crying under the wreckage.” Karaoglu and her husband, Kerim, blame the Turkish government for not acting more quickly. “The most important thing is on the first day, the response was so slow,” he said. “My mother tried to go to city hall, try to get help. We tried to organize everybody around Kahramanmaras to get help, cranes. It just didn’t happen.” The bodies of Mustafa’s wife and two older sons were recovered on the fourth day. Karaoglu’s mother lost consciousness as they were pulled from the building. Her 8-year-old grandson, Emir Yigit, was found in his mother’s arms. “Maybe if they find them quickly, maybe Emir Yigit would be living now,” Karaoglu said. It wasn’t until the seventh day that Mustafa and his youngest son, just 3 years old, were recovered. The little boy had died only 10 hours earlier, the family was told.