With Fingerprints, DNA and Pictures, Turkey Seeks Households of the Lacking

When a robust earthquake struck southern Turkey final month, a lawyer concluded that her relations had been buried within the rubble of their collapsed condominium.

Three days later, rescue employees recovered the our bodies of her mom and brother, she mentioned, however days, then weeks, then a month handed with no signal of her father. His disappearance plunged her right into a terrifying thriller confronted by households throughout the quake zone whose family members are nonetheless lacking.

“I can’t discover my father wherever on the planet — not beneath the rubble, not within the hospitals, not wherever,” mentioned the lawyer, Mervat Nasri, who’s from Syria.

5 weeks after a 7.8-magnitude earthquake and a strong aftershock struck southern Turkey, killing 47,000 individuals, many others stay unaccounted for, including ambiguity to the temblor’s full toll and leaving households in an agonizing limbo. Greater than 6,000 individuals have been additionally killed throughout the border in northern Syria.

The Turkish authorities have offered scant details about how many individuals are lacking, making the scope unclear. One indication is the variety of unidentified our bodies buried in cemeteries. Ahmet Hilal, a professor of forensic drugs at Cukurova College in Adana, mentioned his analysis within the stricken space discovered that there have been at the moment about 1,470.

Current interviews with specialists, survivors and officers concerned within the restoration efforts indicated chaos within the catastrophe’s first days, with injured individuals dispatched to faraway hospitals the place they might have died with out their relations’ information, and unidentified our bodies swiftly buried as a result of rescue employees had no place to retailer them.

Within the weeks since, the Turkish authorities have begun utilizing fingerprints, DNA checks and pictures to attempt to hyperlink unidentified our bodies with their subsequent of kin.

One department of that effort is in a rocky lot in Narlica, a city in Hatay Province, one of many areas most closely broken by the quake. On a latest day, cops and prosecutors labored in steel delivery containers, which have been used as quake-proof shelters. A stream of households got here by, hoping to search out traces of lacking family members.

The police recorded the names of lacking relations and checked a database to see if that they had been discovered elsewhere. Households that discovered matches acquired dying certificates, images taken earlier than their relations have been buried, and the cemetery names and grave numbers the place that they had been laid to relaxation.

These whose relations’ names weren’t within the system watched a big display because the police scrolled via lots of of images of unidentified our bodies, a lot of them disfigured, hoping to see a face they acknowledged.

Some households got here away with nothing. They gave blood for DNA checks that might be crosschecked with samples taken from unidentified our bodies earlier than burial.

“I checked greater than 150 images. I couldn’t take it anymore,” mentioned Suheyl Avci after leaving the container to smoke a cigarette. “My brother is continuous now.”

Greater than two dozen of Mr. Avci’s relations had been killed within the quake, he mentioned, however he was nonetheless trying to find an aunt. He had heard a rumor {that a} girl along with her identify had been pulled from the rubble alive, however he had not managed to search out her.

Different households acquired painful confirmations of loss.

“He was like a mountain, my son,” cried Makbule Karadeniz, 62, after recognizing her lifeless son Sait, 35, within the images.

The quake on Feb. 6 destroyed lots of of hundreds of buildings throughout southern Turkey, ruining some hospitals, overwhelming others and creating chaos that made it straightforward for relations to lose one another.

After the quake, Sakine Nur Gul, 27, navigated a blizzard and roads clogged with emergency automobiles to achieve her household’s constructing within the metropolis of Antakya, lastly arriving 19 hours after it had collapsed, she mentioned.

Assuming her relations have been entombed inside, she waited by the rubble as rescue employees dug for our bodies and survivors, she mentioned. However once they reached the basement on the sixth day, that they had not discovered her relations.

So she started a painful, weekslong odyssey to search out her mom, father and brother, who have been amongst 28 individuals lacking from the identical constructing.

Considering they may have been pulled out alive quickly after the quake, she visited hospitals and graveyards all through the world and gave blood within the hope that her DNA would result in a match.

Early on, she mentioned, she discovered sprawling expanses of recent, numbered graves, however nobody to elucidate who was buried the place, she mentioned. Some hospitals refused to indicate her images of unidentified sufferers of their intensive care items, citing privateness issues.

Because the search dragged on, the birthdays of her lacking brother and father handed, she mentioned. 9 days after the quake, her father’s financial institution despatched his final computerized mortgage cost for the household’s now nonexistent condominium.

She has struggled to keep up hope that they’re nonetheless alive, whereas feeling unable to grieve till she is bound they’re lifeless.

“How lengthy are we going to have to attend?” she mentioned.

Earlier earthquakes in Turkey left many individuals unaccounted for.

Greater than 18,000 individuals have been killed in a quake close to Istanbul in 1999. To today, 5,840 are formally nonetheless lacking, most believed to have been interred with out being recognized. They don’t seem to be included within the dying toll.

After final month’s quake, round 5,000 unidentified individuals have been buried throughout the quake zone, mentioned Mr. Hilal, the professor of forensic drugs. However within the weeks since, he mentioned, that quantity has gone all the way down to round 1,470 as a result of lots of the buried our bodies have been recognized via DNA matches and different strategies.

Individuals might have disappeared in numerous methods, Professor Hilal mentioned. Overwhelmed rescue employees buried our bodies earlier than they have been recognized, though usually, they collected images, fingerprints or blood. Others might have been charred by fires within the rubble, making identification troublesome, he mentioned.

Different stays might have been hauled away by accident when rubble was eliminated, Professor Hilal mentioned, however this was unlikely as a result of many individuals waited close to buildings till their relations had been discovered.

In the long run, Professor Hilal mentioned he anticipated the variety of lacking individuals to be decrease than in 1999, when the state couldn’t match DNA and didn’t have fingerprints for as many Turkish residents and residents.

However for a lot of households, the uncertainty continues.

Within the days after the quake, Reema Baliqji and her two sons have been rescued from the rubble of their constructing, she mentioned, and the our bodies of her husband and youthful daughter have been recovered. However her older daughter, Fariyal Idris, 17, was lacking, as was a 15-year-old woman from one other household who had been rescued and despatched away in an ambulance.

On the delivery containers in Narlica, the police discovered information for her husband and youthful daughter, ready dying certificates and gave her the places and numbers of their plots in a sprawling new cemetery close by. She additionally acquired a shock: the burial location of a niece with the identical final identify who the household had not even recognized was lacking.

However there was nonetheless no hint of her older daughter.

“We are going to wait and see what occurs,” Ms. Baliqji mentioned.

Gulsin Harman contributed reporting from Istanbul.