Turkey marks two years since deadly earthquake amid pain and anger

Thousands of survivors held torchlit vigils across southern Turkey at 4:17 a.m. Thursday, expressing pain and anger as they marked the exact moment two years ago when a devastating earthquake struck that led 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.

"Although two years have passed, we are still hurting. It still feels like it did on that first day. That hasn't changed," survivor Emine Albayrak, 25, told AFP in Antakya, the site of the ancient city of Antioch, which lost 90 percent of its buildings.

More than 20,000 people died in Antakya and the surrounding province.

"Can anybody hear me?" the crowd chanted, echoing the calls of those trapped under the wreckage in freezing temperatures for hours or days before help came.

Crossing a bridge, many threw red carnations into the Orontes River to remember the victims.

But alongside the grief, there was also anger, with mourners carrying a huge banner reading: "We will not forget, we will not forgive. We will hold them accountable!"

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.

"This was not an earthquake, this was a massacre!" they chanted, their voices echoing eerily through the night.

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.

Later in the morning, Christians gathered under a gazebo outside the ruins of Antakya's 14th-century Greek Orthodox church, a mournful chant for the dead cutting through the air, live footage showed.

AFP