How did a grieving mother reveal the truth about her son's death?

By Esra Yalcinalp in Istanbul and Osman Kaytasoglu in London BBC Turkish

BBC Norgul Goksu says she was a “normal” housewife before the earthquake

On February 6, 2023, a massive earthquake struck southern Turkey, killing more than 55,000 people.

It is now clear that dozens of lives could have been saved if building codes had been adhered to.

A mother set out on a mission to find out why the building where her loved ones lived collapsed.

Before the earthquake hit, Nurgul Goksu was, she says, an ordinary housewife. She loved cooking with “içli köfte,” a traditional meatball dish, one of her favorite recipes.

She lived on the outskirts of Istanbul. Her 31-year-old son, Ahmet Can Zabon, who is married with a young child, lives in the southeastern city of Kahramanmaraş.

Ahmet Can was not Nurgul's only child, but as her eldest son whom she had as a teenage mother, their relationship was special.

She put him into university and was proud of what he had achieved. Both Ahmed Jan and his wife Nusayba were lawyers. Norgul herself never went to university, and had to finish her studies by obtaining an external degree.

When the earthquake struck Kahramanmaras, at least 7,000 buildings in the city collapsed, including the Ahmet Can Building.

Norgul rushed to the city to search for her son, his wife, and their child, or “her three children,” as she put it.

Ahmed Jan, his wife Nusayba, and their infant daughter Aswad were killed in the earthquake

While many buildings in Kahramanmaraş were destroyed in the earthquake, the area where Nurgul's son lives does not appear to have been severely affected.

A large part of the neighborhood sustained minor damage. But his ten-story apartment building, known as the Ezgi Building, was one of the few buildings that was leveled.

Similar discrepancies occurred in other areas affected by the earthquake as well. Many in Turkey began to wonder why some buildings collapsed and others did not, even if they were located next to each other and were similar in height, age and construction style.

Norgul waited as rescue teams wandered through the ruins of the Ezgi building.

Eight days later, the bodies of Ahmed Can, his wife Nasiba, and their daughter Asudi, Nurgul's granddaughter, were found.

Baby Asude was only six months old.

“Losing not one, but three children is really hard,” Nurgul says.

She often shares family photos on the social media accounts she created after the disaster.

“I didn't want them to die in vain and for me to forget them,” Nurgul says.

In total, 35 people died in the Izgi building collapse. Only two survived.

The Ezgi Building in Kahramanmaraş collapsed when the earthquake occurred, while many other buildings surrounding it remained standing

After losing her family, Nurgul decides to get to the bottom of why her son's building collapsed when the others did not. But she needed evidence and expert knowledge.

I spoke to local civil engineers and construction experts. I learned how to find “before” and “after” photos online and began to understand building regulations and the processes required to approve any modifications.

Then, in June last year, I watched a BBC Turkish video on YouTube about a building collapsing in the city of Izmir after the 2020 earthquake.

Nurgul wrote to us on social media asking for help in analyzing the collapse of the Ezgi building.

We stayed in contact with her for several months, while she continued to check whether the modifications to the building had been done correctly.

We used graphics to illustrate our findings.

Evidence that kitchen fans (highlighted in red) had been cut into the supporting walls was found among the rubble

“I tried to find as much evidence as possible at the place where I lost my child,” Nurgul says.

“This wasn't supposed to be my responsibility. But it seems like if I hadn't done this, we wouldn't have found anything.”

Norgul discovered that in many areas affected by the earthquake, investigations, opened after allegations of violations of building regulations, were closed due to insufficient evidence.

She didn't want this to happen in her own investigation, so she gave several television interviews to publicize her case. Although she was not a social media user before the earthquake, she also opened an Instagram account about the Ezgi Building, trying to gather information from other families of those who died and construction experts.

Norgul asserted that the prosecutor could have used public records to gather evidence about how the building was initially built.

However, she wanted to ensure that all parties responsible for the building's collapse were brought to justice – which is why she focused on gathering evidence on how restoration and modifications to the building were carried out.

Watch: Survivors of the Syrian earthquake are still sleeping in a tent

When the Prosecutor's Office opened an investigation and commissioned an expert to prepare a report into the collapse of the Izge Building, Nurgul's evidence became a major contribution.

The report, completed in July 2023, found that several modifications to the building were made in breach of existing regulations and were illegal.

Dr. Bayza Taskin, assistant professor of civil engineering at Istanbul Technical University, told the BBC that the fact that the surrounding buildings remained intact indicates that there is a major structural problem with the Ezgi building.

The report revealed that the main support element was not built properly or was subsequently changed.

Official laboratory analysis also showed that some materials and construction processes did not meet approved standards.

Then there was something else: the building's café.

A model of the Izgi building (right). Other nearby buildings were not affected by the earthquake

Questions about the previous renovation of a ground-floor café began to arise shortly after the collapse of the Ezgi Building.

The renovation involved merging three separate units on the ground floor into one large area. A service lift was also installed by removing part of the floor and multiple large openings for ventilation were cut from the curtain walls.

Another change was the removal or replacement of the bearing wall, which was included in the building's original design but later disappeared.

In 2021, residents of Amarat Ejzi signed a petition asking the local authority to examine the causes of the building's collapse, as they were concerned that the renovations might affect its structural integrity.

The response said that “no deviation” from the original architectural project was found.

Norgul now wonders why the call for help was ignored, and whether the authorities “looked at the building when they wrote this response.”

As soon as the report on the causes of the collapse arrived, the Public Prosecutor's Office opened a criminal case.

The interior designer of the ground floor café and the engineer principally responsible for the building's initial construction were arrested in September 2023 and are awaiting trial.

An arrest warrant was also issued for the construction contractor, but was not executed, likely due to his advanced age.

His lawyer denied accusations that his client was responsible for the crash and blamed subsequent modifications. The lawyer has not yet responded to our request for further comment.

The café owners whom the Public Prosecutor ordered arrested have also disappeared and are still at large. Last September, they took to social media to deny responsibility for any building regulations violations in the ground floor renovations.

Local authorities still need to be questioned.

We asked the Turkish Ministry of Interior for comment, but did not receive a response.

Kaun Khamush/BBC Norgul Goksu is helping other earthquake victims bring those responsible for illegal building modifications to justice

Arrests and criminal charges are not unique to the Ezgi case – dozens of cases linked to faulty construction and illegal modifications to buildings in earthquake-affected areas have been opened.

In July last year, the Turkish Ministry of Justice said that more than 350 people had been arrested in such cases.

While working on her own case, Norgul was also helping others, sharing her knowledge of building systems and civil engineering, as well as her skills in using open source intelligence.

She says she is determined to find those responsible for the collapse to ensure no one is tempted to bypass or violate building codes in the future.

“Maybe for the sake of Ezgi Building, such things will not happen in the future. I strive to set an example.”

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