Thousands of survivors held torchlit vigils across southern Turkey very early today expressing pain and anger as they marked exactly two years when a devastating earthquake struck leading to the deaths of over 53,000 people in Turkey and some 6,000 in Syria.
The 7.8 magnitude quake struck before dawn when people were sleeping, destroying almost 40,000 buildings and severely damaging about 200,000 others in Turkey, leaving huge numbers trapped under the rubble.
A survivor Emine Albayrak, said “Although two years have passed, we are still hurting. It still feels like it did on that first day. That hasn’t changed,”
The collapse of so many structures in one of the world’s most earthquake-prone areas pointed to the greed of unscrupulous developers and corrupt bureaucrats who rubber-stamped unsafe projects on unsuitable land.
Security forces set up barricades and prevented marchers from reaching a certain area, prompting scuffles with police who detained three people, prompting the crowd to call for “the government’s resignation, Antakya’s local newspaper reported.
