Turkey earthquake survivors search the rubble for their gold savings

OSMANIYA, Turkey, March 7 – In the near-deserted downtown of Osmaniye, southern Turkey, an elderly couple waits by the ruins of the three-storey building where they used to live, hoping their life savings will wade through the rubble when it is. to survey.

Reyhan Vural, 48, and her husband, Metin, 59, survived the devastating February 6 earthquake that killed more than 50,000 people in Turkey and Syria. But like many who survived, they are now grappling with the loss of almost everything.

The Vural family and many others kept decades’ worth of savings at home in the form of gold—usually coins or jewelry—a longstanding practice in Turkey and the Middle East where storing the precious metal in a home is often more reliable than depositing cash in a bank.

“Everything we have is in the rubble,” Vural said, pointing to the pile of rubble that once housed her house on a quiet street lined with citrus trees. “We’d go buy a house and gold because it was there,” she said.

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Vural and her husband come to the wreck every day to see if they can find their valuables. “I know where the gold is, so when the prospectors come over, I’ll have them stop for a moment to see if I can get it out.”

Turkey’s population has also increasingly preferred to buy gold to protect themselves from rampant inflation and the sharp depreciation of the Turkish lira in recent years.

“Nobody believes in the state. They believe in gold,” said a rubble-clearing contractor, who declined to be named.

Authorities are quickly clearing the rubble and starting to focus on rebuilding for the millions who have lost their homes.

But the disaster area is still full of people waiting by the rubble and examining the wreckage to find their valuables.

The bride is gone

Hatice Yigit, 57, survived six days under the rubble of an apartment building in Antakya before being rescued by British emergency workers. After she recovered, she returned to the site hoping to recover about 50,000 Turkish liras ($2,600), mostly gold, that had been saved for her daughter’s marriage.

“Everything is there. Even my dreams are there,” she said.

She said her daughter’s wedding may need to be postponed for several years if she can’t find it.

Gold is meant to give the newlyweds a financial head start.

Others fear that they will never find their savings.

Fadi Qabbani, originally from the Syrian city of Idlib, lost his wife and seven-year-old son when the building he was living in collapsed.

He now lives in a makeshift tent, but said the $1,000 worth of gold he lost, while not a large sum, would have provided him and his surviving son with better housing and food.

He said it took four days for him to recover his wife’s body. “We didn’t think of anything else… Now, we’re pretty sure there’s nothing left.”

(Covering) Taymur Azhari, Editing by Humeyra Pamuk and Alexandra Hudson

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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