The families still searching for loved ones a year after Turkey’s earthquakes: ‘I don’t have a grave for my son’

The disaster in February 2023 killed more than 50,000 in Turkey and 6,000 in Syria. Lizzie Porter reports from two of the regions worst affected by the devastating tremors – and speaks to families struggling to rebuild their lives

Suna Ozturk sits in front of a poster of people missing since the earthquakes in Turkey, while at home in Aksaray. Her daughter and two grandsons went missing in the disaster (Lizzie Porter)

Suna Ozturk has nothing but photos left of her daughter Tugba Kosar.

On a poster of missing people pinned up in her mother’s neat living room, Tugba’s smiling face beams out next to those of her sons, eight-month-old Mehmet Akif and three-year-old Mustafa Kemal. He liked diggers, and was named after Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey.

“Tugba was a very forgiving person, and she was so happy to be a mother,” Suna said, as sleet falls across a steel grey sky outside in the central Anatolian town of Aksaray. “There are no memories left, just pictures.”