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Gallery|Earthquakes

Photos: Life in a cemetery after Turkey’s earthquakes

An undertaker and his family move to a graveyard after their apartment was damaged by quakes.

TURKEY-QUAKE/CEMETERY
Mehmet Dogru, 6, plays inside an open coffin at Cankaya cemetery, where his family moved to in the aftermath of a deadly earthquake in Iskenderun, Turkey. [Susana Vera/Reuters]
Published On 19 Mar 202319 Mar 2023
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Tasked with burying hundreds of victims of Turkey’s massive earthquakes, undertaker Ali Dogru brought his wife and four sons to live in an old bus by the cemetery where he works in the city of Iskenderun.

Last month’s devastating earthquakes killed more than 54,000 people in Turkey and Syria and left millions homeless. Survivors are sheltering in tents, container homes, hotel resorts, university dormitories and even train carriages after hundreds of thousands of buildings collapsed and others were left unsafe.

Worried about his family’s safety, Dogru moved his family to the cemetery from their damaged apartment shortly after the first earthquake struck on February 6. They have been living in an abandoned bus there since.

In his more than six years working at the cemetery, the 46-year-old undertaker typically buried around five bodies a day. The first night after the earthquake, he buried 12 people. The daily numbers of incoming bodies began to soar and within 10 days of the quake, he had arranged the burials of a total of 1,210 victims.

He can cope with living in a cemetery, he said, but the high number of burials over such a short period of time has left him with deep mental scars.

A former butcher, Dogru likened the sight of people carrying their dead family members to the cemetery to people carrying lambs as sacrificial offerings for the Muslim feast of Eid al-Adha.

“As a butcher, I used to see people bring lambs in their arms to be sacrificed. It hit me very hard when I saw people carrying their children, their partners,” he said.

With so many burials to arrange, Dogru had to find heavy machinery to dig graves and coordinate with the tens of imams who came from all over Turkey to help.

“All I wanted was one thing: to work day and night to finish this job. I didn’t want people coming and saying that the bodies were not buried,” he said, adding there were no mass graves.

Dogru said he buried some children and parents who died in each other’s arms in the same grave and stopped people from separating them. “I said: ‘Death could not separate this child from the mother or the father. Why would you do so?'”

Dogru also helped officials photograph unidentified bodies, and take fingerprints and blood and DNA samples. He later showed families to the graves of their relatives, after they had been found through blood tests.

TURKEY-QUAKE/CEMETERY
Dogru's sons spend most of the day with their mother since schools are still closed. They play among the graves with their cousins, who live with Dogru's brother Emrullah and his wife Asli in a tent next to the bus. The family also moved to the cemetery for safety and amid fears of aftershocks. [Susana Vera/Reuters]
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TURKEY-QUAKE/CEMETERY
Left to right: Salih Dogru, 12, his mother Asli Dogru, his sister Zuleyha, 9, his aunt Hatice Dogru, 43, his uncle Ali Dogru, 46, his cousin Ertugrul, 3, and to the right, in silhouette, his father Emrullah Dogru, 37, have dinner together in a tent at Cankaya cemetery. [Susana Vera/Reuters]
TURKEY-QUAKE/CEMETERY
Dogru's family lives in a tent behind the morgue, next to a bus that shelters the family of her brother-in-law, who works at the cemetery as an undertaker. [Susana Vera/Reuters]
TURKEY-QUAKE/CEMETERY
Undertaker Ali Dogru, 46, helps bury an elderly person who died of causes unrelated to the recent deadly earthquake. [Susana Vera/Reuters]
TURKEY-QUAKE/CEMETERY
Salih Dogru, 12, and his cousin Yavuz Dogru, 9, play in a mosque that shows some signs of damage. [Susana Vera/Reuters]
TURKEY-QUAKE/CEMETERY
Hatice Dogru, 43, prepares to do laundry in one of the rooms in the morgue used to wash bodies, in Cankaya cemetery. [Susana Vera/Reuters]
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TURKEY-QUAKE/CEMETERY
Hatice hopes they can move back to their apartment at the end of April and has been cleaning up there to prepare. "I'm thinking of going back home after Eid," she said, referring to Eid al-Fitr, which comes after Ramadan, a month of fasting. "Where can we go if we leave this place? I don't want anything. I just want my house." [Susana Vera/Reuters]
TURKEY-QUAKE/CEMETERY
Asli Dogru, 33, and her daughter Zuleyha, 9, play with a wheelbarrow at Cankaya cemetery. [Susana Vera/Reuters]
TURKEY-QUAKE/CEMETERY
Ali Dogru fears for his children's psychological state, but couldn't find anyone to care for them away from the cemetery. [Susana Vera/Reuters]
TURKEY-QUAKE/CEMETERY
"I plan on taking them on holiday once we're all settled," Dogru said. "They saw all the people with bodies in their arms because they were with me." [Susana Vera/Reuters]
TURKEY-QUAKE/CEMETERY
Dogru's wife Hatice said they had seen many bodies around the bus, mostly children. The family went hungry for the first three days, sheltering at the cemetery as everyone worked to hold funerals. The children did not complain, 43-year-old Hatice said. Her older sons were doing well, she said, though her youngest son started biting his nails and asking to go home. [Susana Vera/Reuters]
TURKEY-QUAKE/CEMETERY
Undertaker Ali Dogru, 46, and his wife Hatice, 43, check for damage in their kitchen after taking a few clothes and cooking utensils, to bring to the cemetery where they moved to in the aftermath of a deadly earthquake. [Susana Vera/Reuters]


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