“I envy people who have a grave to visit.” Earthquake survivors in Türkiye are struggling to rebuild their lives a year on

Southern Türkiye CNN –

Five days after a devastating earthquake struck southern Turkey and northern Syria last year, the world witnessed a miracle: Sezay Karabas and his 6-year-old daughter Sengul were pulled from the rubble of their collapsed apartment building in Gaziantep province without a scratch.

He may have looked like the luckiest man on earth, but he didn't feel that way. His wife, Ruqaya, and his 4-year-old son, Muhammad, died.

“On the one hand you feel happy and on the other hand you feel sad. “I didn’t know if they had made it, but deep down I knew they probably hadn’t,” Karabas said. As he tried to explain his miraculous survival to CNN, Singul played along. Her cousin in the ruins of their partially demolished former home in Correctional City.

They survived by pure luck. He said they were in another room gathering winter coats when the building collapsed, trapping them under five floors of rubble in a meter-high pocket. Four days after he was buried, he heard rescuers working above him, but said he did not scream because he knew they would not hear him. They were rescued the next day, 132 hours later.

“Even we don't know how we survived,” Karabas said. “It was cold, and we had no food or water, but God gave us strength. We did not feel hungry, thirsty or tired even for a minute. We waited and tried to conserve energy.

They have since moved to their family's village and built a new house.

“Our relationship has become more intense. Of course, Singul loved me before but now she doesn’t want to leave my side,” Karabas said.

He added that Singul does not talk about her mother and brother, because she does not want to recall the painful memories of the earthquake.

The initial earthquake on February 6 measured 7.8; A second earthquake measuring 7.5 magnitude occurred hours later. The tremor lasted only seconds, but a year later, it is clear that its impact will be felt for many generations.

Parts of Hatay look like yesterday's earthquake, with badly damaged buildings awaiting demolition. In Antakya's old city centre, there are few signs of life, and even fewer buildings that look like anyone still lives in them.

According to official figures, 14 million people in Türkiye were affected by the earthquake. More than 850,000 housing units were destroyed or severely damaged. Although most of the rubble has been removed, the rebuilding process is proceeding slowly.

Last year, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan pledged to build 650,000 housing units for those who lost their homes due to the earthquake – 319,000 of them within one year.

His government promised to complete 75,000 homes in the next two months, but less than 20,000 homes have been fully completed so far.

Hundreds of temporary “container cities” are spread on the main roads between the affected cities in southern Turkey, which will be permanent for the foreseeable future. Nearly 700,000 survivors still live in these camps – in trailers equipped with water and electricity, but little else.

Ismail Demir lives in a house outside the reformatory city, in Gaziantep province, with his pregnant wife and one-year-old son. When your arms are outstretched, you can almost touch both walls. They have a heater to keep warm and a hot plate for cooking. Because demand for housing far exceeds supply, he cannot afford to rent an apartment on his salary as a factory worker.

“Until (the government) gives us an apartment, we will have to stay here,” he said. The family was living in a rented apartment before the earthquake destroyed their home.

Last year's earthquake killed more than 50,000 people in Turkey and thousands more in neighboring Syria. Accurate information about recovery efforts in Syria is difficult to obtain, but there is little evidence of a large-scale coordinated effort to rebuild.

In Turkey, even after a year, at least 145 people are missing, 38 of them children, according to Sima Gulek, who leads the DEMAK group, which was formed to represent their families. Parliament has twice rejected the group's calls to form a committee to find the missing.

Batuhan, Gulic's 25-year-old son, is among the missing. The building where he lived in the coastal city of Iskenderun collapsed on February 6. For eight days, Gulick and her family helped search through the rubble. Survivors were recovered and bodies were found but not Batuhan.

Weeks later, a woman responded to social media calls for information saying she saw Batuhan on February 6 – covered in dust, but alive. She said the ambulance was too full to transport him, so he was put into a white van instead. Gulick never tracked down the driver.

DNA tests failed to confirm matches to any unidentified bodies. She knows he's likely dead, but she can't give up the little bit of hope fueled by uncertainty about his fate.

“Sometimes at night, I imagine him coming to my apartment and ringing the doorbell, so I take him inside and feed him,” she says. “If I can't find his body, I will wait for him all my life.”

Chidim Nur's brother Mohamed, his wife and their six-year-old daughter are also missing. She said they bought their apartment because it was newer and therefore more likely to withstand earthquakes. It didn't happen. Nour examined body bags, searched hospitals, morgues and cemeteries, and searched orphanages for her niece. She never found any trace.

“Can you imagine longing for a tooth or a fingernail? This is what I long for,” she told CNN, tears streaming down her face. “I envy people who have a grave to visit. “I visit my brother’s friend’s grave to cry and pretend it is my brother’s grave.”

She says the construction is in prison awaiting trial. According to the Turkish Ministry of Justice, 267 construction workers have been convicted since the earthquake to date for building code violations.

The earthquake-affected area was home to nearly half of the 3.6 million Syrian refugees hosted by Turkey.

Khaled Kassar, from the Syrian city of Homs, remained trapped with his wife and three children under the rubble for five hours in Antakya, Hatay Province, before they were rescued.

“It was a miracle,” he said.

He remembers how his children refused to sleep inside for several months after that, for fear of collapsing. The family recently moved to a small studio apartment in Gaziantep, which was relatively unscathed. But because of Turkish law that requires Syrian refugees to remain in the province in which they were initially registered, his children were rejected from local schools, Al-Qassar said. Instead, officials suggested returning to Hatay to register. His former home there is now an empty lot.

His children spend their days at home watching TV and try to study a little as well. His son, Anwar, 7, is a year behind in school. Jamal, 10, is two years behind.

“Oh my God, I worry so much. The last school year was lost, this year is lost and I don’t know what will happen with them. I came here from Syria for my children,” Al-Qassar said.

There is no official data on the number of Syrian children unable to enroll in schools in Turkey, but Mustafa Kara Ali estimates the number at tens of thousands. He runs Kids Rainbow, a non-profit organization based in a center just off one of Gaziantep's alleys, offering support, Turkish language lessons and other activities to keep children off the streets and ready for school — when or if they are able to attend.

The organization helps 120 children, but has a waiting list of more than 500 children who either work in informal jobs or sit at home all day.

“If we have this many children on our waiting list, as one center in one small neighborhood, imagine how many children there are across the city, or across the country. It is a big problem and the Turkish government must solve it.”

CNN contacted the Ministry of Interior for comment.

The Turkish government, led by Erdogan, was sharply criticized in the aftermath of the earthquake for its slow emergency response and delayed mobilization of rescue teams. More broadly, the government has been blamed for lax enforcement of building codes and delays in refurbishing building stock in a country prone to earthquakes.

Criticism was more intense in Hatay, where the opposition Republican People's Party controls the city's main municipality. In contrast, the government has ignored criticism and at times accused the main opposition of incompetence that has hampered a reconstruction process that appears to be progressing more quickly elsewhere.

On the weekend before the anniversary, Erdogan made a trip to the region and opened two new hospitals in Hatay. One of the slogans of the trip was: “We turned the disaster of the century into unity of the century.” The next day, Erdogan was campaigning for his party's candidate for the local mayor's office.

Erdogan noted that cooperation will only come when local governments are under the control of the ruling Justice and Development Party. “If the local administration and the central government do not cooperate, if they are not in solidarity, nothing will come to that city. Has it reached Hatay? Right now, Hatay is alone,” he said.

In Istanbul, Turkey's largest city, the city's mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu, complained about the lack of cooperation with Erdogan's national government, which hinders preparations to confront future earthquakes.

Istanbul has always been fully aware of the danger it faces. A 7.4-magnitude earthquake struck northwestern Turkey in 1999, killing more than 17,000 people. The epicenter of the earthquake was in Kocaeli province, adjacent to Istanbul. The epicenter closer to the city will be more disastrous.

In a press conference last week, Imamoglu presented the alarming statistics. The city estimates that two-thirds of the buildings in Istanbul were built before the 1999 earthquake, after which stricter building codes took effect. About 200,000 buildings will not be able to withstand the next major earthquake, and they urgently need any reinforcement replaced. Three million people live in those buildings. The city's efforts barely made a dent in the numbers.

When asked by CNN why private building owners bear more of the burden, the mayor blamed Turkey's economic problems. “Banks cannot provide loans, interest rates are very high and the cost of construction changes on a regular basis. People think they cannot manage this,” he said.

Many people either don't know – or don't want to know – that their buildings are at risk. Imamoglu added that homeowners often reject city inspectors for fear of uncertainty — although that has been the case less since last year's earthquake.

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