At 4:17 am on Tuesday, thousands of people in cities across southern Turkey gathered to weep, light candles and chant against the government, marking the moment a year ago when a powerful earthquake devastated the region.
The 7.8-magnitude earthquake, and a second violent one hours later, destroyed hundreds of thousands of buildings, killing more than 53,000 people in southern Turkey and another 6,000 in northern Syria. It was the region’s largest and deadliest earthquake in hundreds of years.
The extent of the destruction and the failure of emergency services to reach many people buried in the rubble until days later angered survivors. Many accused building contractors of cutting corners to increase their profits and the government of not enforcing safe construction standards.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan promised in the wake of the disaster to build a large number of new homes in a year. That pledge remains only partially fulfilled, and efforts to hold people accountable for defective construction are moving slowly.
Many survivors are still displaced, grieving for lost loved ones and struggling with lingering trauma.
A look at southern Turkey, one year after the earthquake:
How much has it been rebuilt?
After the earthquake, the government said 227,000 buildings, containing more than 637,000 units, had been severely damaged or destroyed. Mr Erdogan promised the government would build 319,000 new homes within a year.
However, as of the end of January, only 46,000 new units were ready to be handed over to owners, according to the Ministry of Urban Affairs and Environment. Officials have said hundreds of thousands of new units are planned or under construction, and many should be done this year.
The government has also paid rent support to displaced families and launched a project to help apartment owners rebuild their collapsed buildings, although some survivors have struggled to access this assistance.
But the delay in returning survivors to their homes is evident in the sprawling “container cities” that still dot the quake zone, where hundreds of thousands of people live in cramped, prefabricated homes. Many do not have the money to rent elsewhere or rebuild damaged homes.
Has anyone been held accountable?
Much of the anger in the immediate aftermath of the quake focused on contractors and building inspectors, whom survivors accused of doing shoddy work to save money.
So far, the courts have taken up 275 cases and others are still being considered, said Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc was announced Last week. More than 260 suspects have been detained pending trial.
Court hearings have recently begun on a number of cases.
Last month, the trial began for 11 defendants accused of “willful negligence” in connection with the collapse of the Grand Isias Hotel in the city of Adiyaman. More than 70 people were killed, including a group volleyball students and some of their parents and coaches.
Another court agreed to hear a case against eight people accused of violating regulations in the construction of the Renaissance Residence, a luxury housing complex in the city of Antakya that collapsed, killing hundreds.
A New York Times investigation and forensic analysis found that faulty planning, minimal oversight and inadequate safety controls contributed to the collapse.
It is unclear how long such cases will take to go to court or whether any government officials will be tried.
Last week, Human Rights Watch said “not a single public official, elected mayor or city council member has yet been tried” for roles they may have played in greenlighting or failing to protect people from shoddy construction.
Many survivors fear that justice will ultimately be denied to them.
Busra Yildiz, a graphic designer based in Britain, said in an interview that her mother, grandmother and two other relatives died when their building collapsed in the earthquake.
The contractor who built it is in jail, being prosecuted in connection with other failed buildings, but not for her family, said Ms Yildiz, 25. However, he wants to be punished.
“I don’t want him to see the sun again,” she said.
How are the survivors doing?
Many survivors, who are dealing with injuries and coping with grief, believe the government has failed to keep up with the scale of the disaster.
On Tuesday, people in Hatay, one of the hardest-hit provinces, booed them provincial mayor and Minister of Health, forcing them to flee, according to videos posted on social media. Elsewhere, survivors threw carnations into the Orontes River to commemorate the dead and protesters chanted: “We will not forget! We will not forgive!”
Asked about residents’ feeling that not enough had been done to help, Huseyin Yayman, a Hatay lawmaker from Mr Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party, said that feeling was natural.
“We need houses, buildings and above all psychologists,” he said in an interview. “We are all in serious pain.”
In addition to the more than 53,000 dead in Turkey, 134 are still missing, he said. Eighty-three were from his province.
“A year has passed and our pain is still overwhelming,” he said.
How did the president do?
Despite disappointment in the earthquake zone with the government’s initial response, Mr Erdogan won another presidential term in May — despite facing one of the biggest electoral challenges of his 20 years as Turkey’s top politician.
He defended the government’s response to the earthquake, which he called “the disaster of the century”.
“We lived through a disaster that collapsed our houses on our heads and burned our hearts, and we will carry the pain it caused inside us like a burning coal for the rest of our lives,” he said on Tuesday, during a ceremony to give new homes to survivors in the city of Kahramanmaras.
Mr Erdogan said that in recent days, the government had given keys to more than 27,000 new units in cities affected by the earthquake and that 20,000 more would be ready soon.
“There are only a few countries and societies that could resist such a disaster as strongly as Turkey,” he said. “Thank God, on the first anniversary of the earthquake, we have cleared the rubble and made significant progress in rebuilding the cities and people are getting their lives back.”
