After Turkey’s quake, one family mourns its losses — and braces for more

Photo caption: Medine Sonmez (right) has been emotional in the days since the earthquake. “I am gone,” she says. “My body is here but I am gone.” Photo credit: Claire Harbage / NPR. Article by Erin O’Brien and Ruth Sherlock. NPR – February 14, 2023.

ISLAHIYE, Turkey — When volunteer rescue workers pulled Derya Demir, 44, from the rubble of her collapsed apartment in the southeastern Turkish city of Islahiye last Tuesday, her arms were wrapped around her four children. In the last moments of their lives, crushed under the weight of their shoddily built apartment block, Demir and her sons Emir, 3, and Mehmet Ali, 13, and daughters Damla, 8, and Yagmur, 10, had all clung to each other tight. […]

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