Isias Hotel collapsed like a house of cards: ‘They killed my daughter’ | column Mitra Nazar

I had just received a message from my daughter’s school. All schools in the city would remain closed until further notice. Flights were canceled and the mayor called on people not to go outside unless strictly necessary. We would call it code red in the Netherlands.

I slept restlessly that night. I expected to have to report from a snowbound city the next morning. But what woke me up at just before 5:30 am was something completely different.

Things were very wrong in the southeast of Turkey

My light sleep was interrupted by the buzzing of my phone. It was the earthquake app, which is set to push notifications for earthquakes higher than 5 on the Richter scale. Gaziantep 7.8, it said on my screen. Followed by dozens of messages from colleagues and friends. It didn’t take long before I was standing wide awake next to my bed. Things were very wrong in the southeast of Turkey.

What I saw in the days that followed will always stay with me. I walked through collapsed streets, among exhausted rescue workers and past desperate relatives. In Adana, Hatay, Gaziantep, Urfa and Adiyaman. More than 50,000 people died.

Among the victims was a Turkish Cypriot school volleyball team that had traveled to Adiyaman for a tournament days before the disaster and stayed at the now infamous Isias Hotel. The hotel collapsed like a house of cards immediately after the first quake. I remember hearing that at least a hundred people were missing. The panic, the cry for help, and the days-long search for teenagers aged 13, 14, 15 years old. 35 people from the volleyball group were found dead, 26 of whom were children.

Last week I visited Famagusta, the town in Northern Cyprus where the teenagers come from. The tragedy has left a sad hole in the small community there. Almost a year later it is still terribly fresh. I was at home with Rusen and Enver, who lost their only daughter Selin. The walls are full of photos of a happy and active teenager. I see her running on the beach. I see her pensively over a chessboard. I see her with friends.

The children were all found in a sleeping position

A week before leaving for Adiyaman, a trip she was so looking forward to, she had celebrated her 14th birthday, together with her best friend who was born on the same day. Three days after the earthquake, they were found next to each other under the rubble of the hotel. They hadn’t stood a chance, as it turned out. It had taken less than 10 seconds for all eight floors to lie flat on the ground. The children were all found in a sleeping position.

I let Mother Rusen tell me her whole story. No matter how they felt the earthquake in Cyprus, they immediately could not get in touch with Selin. How Selin’s father was able to join a flight with rescue workers. About the chaos he found there before he had to identify her body on day three. She talks about how angry she was when her daughter arrived at the airport in a coffin with her name on it.

She talks for an hour. I don’t want to ask questions, I don’t want to interrupt her. She wants me to hear all the details. I see disbelief mixed with anger in her face, almost a year later. “I was worried about whether the hotel would be clean,” she reflects. “Why didn’t I think: is it built safely?”

Because, just like with many buildings that collapsed during the earthquake, it soon became apparent that everything was wrong with the Isias Hotel. It was built in the 1990s and the cement contained sand from the river. An additional floor had been built illegally and an important retaining wall may have been removed.

After the disaster, about 200 contractors, owners and engineers were arrested for buildings that had been constructed improperly, with all the consequences that entailed. The owner of Isias Hotel was one of them. He is, together with ten other people involved, the first to appear in court. The process started in early January.

‘We will not stop until there is justice’

Selin’s mother was in court. She wanted to look him straight in the eye. “He is the murderer of our children,” she says firmly. “We will not stop until there is justice.”

The Turkish Cypriot families of the victims are the driving force behind the first legal case of this disaster. They set up a foundation, had independent research done and are assisted by the best lawyers. And their fight doesn’t stop with the hotel’s owner and builders. They also targeted the authorities, who issued building permits and approved the building.

“They are all responsible. They took away my daughter’s future. They killed my daughter.”

The Isias Hotel is just one of the many buildings where it became apparent after the disaster that human failure led to many casualties. Dozens of Turkish lawyers have been trying to start similar lawsuits throughout the disaster area for a year, but so far there has been little progress. It is expected that a few owners and contractors will go to prison. But the chances of accountability being held higher up are not great.