Bodies continued to be retrieved from rubble across southern Turkey on Thursday as the death toll from the earthquake neared 42,000 and anger mounted among survivors, who said lax building standards were as much to blame as the tremor itself.
A lone survivor, a 17-year-old girl, was pulled from ruins in the nearly destroyed city of Antakya, in a moment of relief for rescuers. But the almost miraculous rescue was dwarfed by an ongoing recovery operation that shows little sign of slowing down.
Such is the scale of destruction in cities such as Antakya, Kahramanmaraş and Adiyaman, that officials fear thousands of victims are yet to be found.
Rescue teams continue to work frantically across vast tracts of urban ruins, with diggers picking gently at heaped piles of rubble until a body is located. Weary rescuers then switch to cutting tools and spades, attempting to pry victims from the indistinguishable remains of their homes and placing them in body bags.
Callout
The familiar pattern has shown little signs of slowing in the south-eastern city of Adiyaman, where local people say the death toll far exceeds official figures.
“I don’t feel death any more,” said Yousuf Dogan, watching two bodies being recovered. “It has become natural to me. I’ve lost 70 family members and counting. This will end up being one of the biggest death zones in the country.”
Similar refrains come from across southern Turkey as residents try to salvage what remains of their families and belongings. But their grief is being subsumed by anger over the scale of destruction in some areas, compared with nearby communities that have remained largely unscathed.
Developers who constructed buildings that failed to meet safety standards have borne the brunt of anger. But permissive regulatory environments that facilitated the rapid construction of lower-quality structures are in the sights of survivors, who are calling on Ankara to explain how such homes were allowed to be built.
Up to 650 people are believed to have died in one block alone in Antakya – a high-end development that completely collapsed in the quake. Turkey has ordered the arrest of more than 100 developers and builders, but officials who authorised the construction have so far escaped.
Meanwhile, the UN has announced an appeal for $1bn in relief funds for victims in southern Turkey, where, as well as almost 37,000 deaths, up to a million people have been displaced by what the Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said was the biggest ever natural disaster on Nato soil.
A separate appeal for almost $400m has been launched for neighbouring Syria, where close to 6,000 people died in the government-held areas of Aleppo and the north-west of the country, which bore the brunt of damage.
Another 1 million Syrian residents of Turkey are believed to have been affected by the disaster, with many having fallen between the cracks of Turkey, which is caring for its citizens, and the UN, which has been roundly criticised for its slow response.
“The Turkish government gave Syrians with temporary protection a permission to go to north-west Syria for three months at least and a maximum of six months, so many Syrians thought they have a better chance of surviving in the next few months at least in Syria,” said Labib al-Nahhas, the head of diplomatic outreach at the Syrian Association for Citizens’ Dignity.
“Syrian refugees return to north-west Syria because they have no other options, and no meaningful aid and assistance is given to them. It’s a forced return.”
Up to 2,300 bodies have been returned to Syria from southern Turkey, while 2,800 Syrian citizens have voluntarily gone back through the Bab al-Hawa crossing.
“Syrians are afraid that the absence of any real effort from the UN to help them rebuild their lives in south Turkey is a prelude to a forced return to regime areas,” Nahhas said.
Up to 120 aid trucks had crossed into Syria as of Thursday. However, local officials say aid needs dwarf the amount of relief being received, with large numbers of people having no shelter or protection against the winter.
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development said on Thursday that the economic toll of the quake in Turkey could reach $25bn, equating to 2.5% of the country’s GDP.
