With So Many Dead in Turkey, Families Forced to Rush Funeral Rites

KAPICAM, Turkey — The mom wept subsequent to the straightforward picket slat that marked the place her son had been buried in an extended, skinny mound of filth that held dozens of others misplaced within the devastating earthquake that struck southern Turkey.

In an abbreviated type of the standard funeral rites, his physique had been cleansed in accordance with Islamic custom, wrapped in a white shroud and lowered into the earth, giving her a second of dignity and closure throughout every week of compounding tragedies.

“My son, my son,” cried the mom, Gullu Kolac.

Round her within the cemetery had been many new mounds that disappeared into the space, holding tons of of different graves. Close by, mechanical excavators had been digging extra.

The 7.8 magnitude earthquake that hit southern Turkey on Monday killed so many individuals so rapidly that it overwhelmed the funeral course of, accelerating how households say goodbye.

Gone, in the meanwhile, are the rituals the place kin lovingly wash and shroud the departed’s physique, maintain a funeral and welcome pals and kin paying condolences. The brand new, crisis-driven course of goals to honor the lifeless and rapidly bury them, for each customized and public well being.

The tragedy has reworked the cemetery exterior the village of Kapicam, close to the place the earthquake struck in southern Turkey.

In regular instances, it could be a serene place: surrounded by forest and shaded by towering pines, with a panorama of snowcapped mountains within the distance. However on Thursday, three days after the earthquake that killed greater than 17,500 in Turkey and three,000 in neighboring Syria, it was full of grieving households and stuffed with lifeless our bodies, wrapped in blankets or zipped up in physique luggage.

Many of the our bodies arrived within the backs of vans, ambulances and funeral automobiles after having been pulled from the rubble of buildings destroyed by the quake. They lay on the bottom across the website, typically in teams of a dozen or extra, ready for kin to say them or to obtain their last preparations for burial.

Crisscrossing the cemetery was a seemingly countless stream of males carrying physique luggage from the tents the place the our bodies had been ready towards the lengthy, slim trenches the place they’d be buried.

Adnan Beyhan, a non secular official who had traveled from a faraway metropolis to assist with the earthquake response, mentioned that the disaster situations meant that the traditional Muslim funeral rites needed to be modified.

Most of the our bodies that arrived had been broken by collapsing buildings or had began to decompose, he mentioned, which means that they might not be undressed and washed with water earlier than being wrapped in shrouds, as was completed in regular circumstances.

So some stored their garments, and the individuals who ready the our bodies used an Islamic apply generally known as “teyemmum” in Turkish, which permits catastrophe victims to be “washed” by gently stroking them with filth or stones, he mentioned.

They’re then wrapped in white fabric for burial.

Not all households had been instantly snug with the apply, he mentioned. The day earlier than, a person who had misplaced a relative requested if it was acceptable in Islam to bury individuals this manner.

“I instructed him, ‘After all it’s OK. And so they have the standing of a martyr,’” he mentioned, which is taken into account a blessing in Islam.

The person left relieved, he mentioned.

For a lot of, ready was its personal ordeal. In Islam, burials are presupposed to occur as quickly as potential.

Cengizhan Ceyhan had come to the cemetery for the funeral of his sister, Saziye Ozer, and her daughter Belis, 10, who had died trapped within the rubble of a collapsed constructing, he mentioned.

“If it had been a automobile accident, you can be with them instantly, wash them instantly,” he mentioned. “However this manner, you understand they’re lifeless, however you need to anticipate days. You continue to have hope, which is painful. You don’t need to settle for that they’re lifeless.”

For Ms. Kolac, who got here to bury her son, the go to to the cemetery had been a method station on a highway strewn with tragedies.

Three of her kin had been buried in rubble: her son, Yakup Bulduk, 22, alongside along with her different son’s spouse and their 2-year-old son.

Her husband had managed to seek out Yakup, whom they buried that day. Since they had been nonetheless in search of the others, they’d take no time to completely mourn or settle for condolences.

“We’re going again to the rubble to attend for the child and the spouse,” she mentioned.

The funeral course of is systematized, if a bit chaotic. Our bodies arriving to the cemetery are checked to verify their deaths have been formally recorded and loss of life certificates issued. Whereas many of the our bodies are recognized, these that aren’t are fingerprinted by the police, who typically additionally take blood samples. The knowledge is recorded in a authorities system with the variety of the individual’s grave, in order that kin can discover it ought to they arrive later.

The our bodies are handed to groups of civil servants working for the state’s non secular authority, who take them into tents — some for males, others for ladies — to arrange them for burial and wrap them in white fabric. They’re then put in physique luggage and laid on easy tables, the place kin pray for them, as they’d usually do in mosques.

Then they’re carried to the trenches and coated with filth by a bulldozer. Some households add small, private touches to the positioning, writing the individual’s title on the wooden with a pen, wrapping it with a shawl or laying flowers on the filth.

Two adjoining graves every had pink socks with white horses, as in the event that they belonged to a pair of sisters, or presumably twins.

The proximity to loss of life takes a toll on the employees, too.

One gray-haired non secular official who helped cleanse our bodies mentioned that he and his colleagues had felt depressed the day earlier than after coping with so many our bodies that had been so broken.

“However we take shelter in God,” he mentioned, declining to provide his title as a result of he was not licensed to talk to journalists. “We attempt to preserve our spirits up as a result of in entrance of us there’s something worthwhile, a human.”

Because the solar set via the pines, males carried physique luggage towards the graves, excavators lengthened the trenches and households rested subsequent to their liked one’s plots, saying prayers or crying.

A 75-year-old lady who mentioned she had misplaced 11 kin within the earthquake walked towards the parking zone after a burial.

“All of the little youngsters are gone,” she mentioned.