Earthquake tears apart a Turkish-British family

Warning - this portion contains details that immoderate readers whitethorn find distressing.

We look backmost connected the metropolis of Gaziantep and thrust deeper into the snow-flecked mountainside of south-eastern Turkey.

It is progressively distant terrain, yet it feels truthful acquainted - colony aft colony bears the aforesaid devastating scars.

We halt astatine a tiny spot we larn is called Ördekdede and stumble into a Turkish assemblage wherever their dormant present outnumber the living.

This is simply a grim caller world for truthful galore dots of the representation crossed the immense corridor of this portion wherever the crushed shook astir violently.

The past radical we expect to find among the survivors successful this secluded spot - huddling astir a fire, sipping beverage - are 2 Londoners.

Mehmet and Fatma Meter are from Finsbury Park, northbound London.

"This earthquake has destroyed everything," says Fatma, arsenic she wipes tears with her scarf.

"We arrived successful Turkey earlier the earthquake for my brother's funeral," Mehmet explains.

"But present we've had to hide 7 of our family."

They instrumentality america connected a travel to papers wherever each precious beingness was lost.

So we prime our mode done their decimated community, which is present a grotesque jumble of breached bricks, twisted metallic and dusty rubble.

Fatma leads america on the way earlier stopping, pointing to a country of the wreckage wherever she says the archetypal of 3 relatives perished.

"We tried to prevention them. The dependable was coming from there, truthful [we] rushed to help. Ali was shouting from nether the rubble, 'save me, prevention me'.

"We saved Ali. But Shemse, Kamel, Ayshe, determination was nary answer, nothing."

Kamel and Semse were antheral and wife, their girl Ayshe conscionable 16. Their 20-year-old aged son, Alican, is the lone subsister from the location and is present successful infirmary with a breached leg.

"Just 1 time earlier we ate meal together," Fatma says.

"One time aboriginal each of these radical die. How tin I judge it?"

Fatma shakes her caput arsenic she relives however she helped to transportation the bodies from the debris and took them distant for the burial.

Among the galore heaps of bricks present crowned with a twisted portion of corrugated robust are the remains of Mehmet's father's house.

It's hard to ideate anyone getting retired alive.

But 87-year-old Abdi Meter did.

"His seat fell against a partition and opened up a mode for him to escape. I can't judge helium did it."

It is simply a fewer steps up the roadworthy wherever Mehmet stops successful his tracks and reveals the representation successful his caput that is haunting him.

The representation of his young nephew Umut Efe's body.

"A sofa was pushing him up towards the sky. And past I saw his look looking maine successful the eyes. He had passed 2 days agone and his colour had changed. He was astir five."

The representation is excessively earthy and helium waves his manus successful beforehand of his look earlier turning distant sobbing.

If determination is immoderate imaginable tiny mercy successful this country of ruination, it's that the earthquake struck successful wintertime erstwhile less homes successful the colony were occupied.

During the summer, it's a antithetic communicative arsenic members of the Turkish diaspora successful France, Germany arsenic good arsenic the UK instrumentality to spot relatives and bask a nourishing dose of nostalgia from their childhoods.

Just on the roadworthy we find Siho Yukselir, a lorry operator who has spent the past 30 years calling London home, surviving successful Golders Green.

As helium contemplates the wreckage of his ain family's house, helium conveys the disbelief and choler that's characterised truthful galore radical we've met implicit the past fewer days.

"I'm precise very shocked. I can't halt crying. I was calved successful this village" helium tells us.

"I mislaid everything. No insurance, nary thing and the government's not helping. You person to bash it yourself again."

For now, successful the depths of grief and exhaustion, rebuilding this shattered assemblage feels similar an overwhelming, possibly impossible, task.

Before we permission Ördekdede, we inquire Fatima and Mehmet erstwhile they volition alert backmost to the UK.

"How tin I bash it? I don't know. How tin I spell backmost to London?"

With Turkey successful this hopeless state, she cannot permission her homeland.

Additional reporting by Naomi Scherbel-Ball and Doğu Eroğlu.