Turkey Earthquake: How A Grieving Mother Uncovered The Truth Behind Her Son's Death

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

It has now become clear that scores of lives could have been saved if building regulations had been observed.

One mother has made it her mission to find out what caused the building where her loved ones lived to collapse.

Before the earthquake struck Nurgül Göksu was, as she says, a normal housewife. She loved cooking, with "içli köfte", a traditional dish of meatballs, one of her favourite recipes.
 
She lived on the outskirts of Istanbul. Her 31-year-old son, Ahmet Can Zabun, married, with a young baby, lived in the south-eastern city of Kahramanmaras.

Ahmet Can wasn't Nurgül's only child, but as her oldest son whom she had as a teen mum, their relationship was special.
 
She put him through university and was proud of what he achieved. Both Ahmet Can and his wife Nesibe were lawyers. Nurgül herself never went to university, and had to finish school through an external degree.

When the quake hit Kahramanmaras, at least 7,000 buildings in the city collapsed, including Ahmet Can's.
Nurgül dashed to the city to search for her son, his wife and their child - or, as she puts it, her "three children".

While many buildings in Kahramanmaras had been destroyed in the earthquake, the area where Nurgül's son lived didn't seem to have been affected as badly.

Much of the neighbourhood was barely damaged. But his residential block, 10 storeys high and known as the Ezgi Building, was one of very few which were flattened.

Similar discrepancies occurred in other quake-affected areas too. Many in Turkey started asking why some buildings collapsed and others did not, even if they had been situated right next to each other and were of similar height, age and construction style.
 
Nurgül waited as the rescue teams trawled through the ruins of the Ezgi Building.
Eight days later, the bodies of Ahmet Can, his wife Nesibe and their baby daughter Asude, Nurgül's granddaughter, were found.

Baby Asude was only six months old.

"Losing not just one but three children is truly hard," says Nurgül.

She frequently shares family photos on social media accounts she created after the disaster.
"I didn't want them to die in vain and for me to just forget about them," says Nurgül.
 
In total, 35 people died in the collapse of the Ezgi Building. Only two survived.