Before February last year, Nurgul Goksu was, as she says, an ordinary housewife.
She loved to cook, especially kibe, a traditional meatball dish, one of her favorite recipes.
She lived on the outskirts of Istanbul, while her 31-year-old son, Ahmet Kan Zabun, lived in southeast Turkey with his wife and small baby.
Ahmet Khan was not her only son, but she had a special relationship with him - he was her firstborn, she gave birth to him as a teenager.
She managed to educate him to a university degree and was proud of what she had achieved.
However, on February 6, 2023, her life turned upside down.
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The city of Kahramanmaras, where Ahmet Khan lived, became the epicenter of a powerful earthquake.
At least 7.000 buildings in the city collapsed, among them Ahmet Kanova.
Nurgul immediately rushed to Kahramanmaras in search of her son, his wife and their child.
She calls them "her three children".
Exi building
Although many buildings in Kahramanmaraş were destroyed in the earthquake, the area where Nurgula's son lived did not seem to be so badly affected.
His ten-story apartment building, known as the Ezgi Building, was one of the few that was completely razed to the ground.
The rest of the quarter was barely damaged.
Similar inconsistencies occurred in other areas affected by the earthquake and many in Turkey began to ask questions.
For example, why some buildings collapsed and others did not, even though they were next to each other and of similar height, age and construction style.
Nurgul waited as the rescue teams made their way through the ruins of the Ezgi building.
Eight days later, the bodies of Ahmet Khan, his wife Nesiba and their baby Asuda, Nurgula's granddaughter, were found.
Both Ahmet Khan and Nesibe were lawyers.
Baby Asuda was only six months old.
"Losing not one child but three is really hard," says Nurgul.
On social networks, which she opened after the disaster, she often shares family pictures.
"I didn't want them to die in vain and just forget about them," says Nurgul.
A total of 35 people died in the demolition of the Egzi building.
Only two survived.
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An expert in search of the truth
Nurgul decided to find out the real reason why her son's building collapsed and the others didn't.
For that she needed evidence and expert knowledge.
She spoke with local civil engineers and construction experts.
She learned how to find "before" and "after" pictures on the Internet.
She began to understand building codes and the processes necessary to get any building changes approved.
And then, in June of last year, she came across a video of the BBC in Turkish on YouTube, which we made after the earthquake in Izmir in 2020 about the demolition of a building.
She sent us a message through social networks, asking for help in analyzing the demolition of the Egzi building.
We stayed in touch with her for months as she continued to investigate whether the changes to the Egzi building were regular.
We put her findings into a series of graphics to illustrate what happened there.
"I tried to find as much evidence as possible at the place where I lost my child. That shouldn't have been my responsibility," says Nurgul.
"But if I hadn't done that, it looks like we wouldn't have found anything."
Nurgul revealed that investigations launched into allegations of building code violations have been suspended in many earthquake-hit areas due to a lack of evidence.
She didn't want that to happen to her.
In order to gain publicity for the case, she gave numerous television interviews.
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Despite not being social media savvy before the earthquake, she opened an Instagram account for the Ezgi building, trying to gather more information from other families of those who died and experts on the building.
Nurgul points out that the prosecutor was able to find evidence about the way the building was built from public documents.
However, she wanted to ensure that all parties responsible for the demolition of the building would be brought to justice.
Which is why she focused on gathering evidence about how renovations and changes were made to the building.
The Prosecutor's Office opened an investigation and requested an expert report on the demolition of the Ezgi building.
That report was completed in July 2023.
Nurgula's evidence was a key contribution.
What it says in the report?
The report stated that many changes to the building were made in violation of existing building regulations and were illegal.
The fact that the surrounding buildings remained intact indicates that there were major structural problems with the Ezgi building, Beyza Taskin, an associate professor of civil engineering at Istanbul University of Technology, told the BBC.
The report found that a key supporting element was either never built properly or was subsequently modified.
Official laboratory analysis also showed that some materials and construction processes did not meet approved standards.
But that's not all, there was something else.
Cafe on the ground floor
After the demolition of the Ezgi building, questions began to be asked about the earlier renovation of the coffee shop on the ground floor.
The renovation involved merging three separate units on the ground floor into one large room.
An official lift was introduced by removing part of the floor, and several large ventilation holes were drilled in the outer walls.
Another change was the removal or replacement of a load-bearing wall, which was in the original design of the building but later disappeared.
In 2021, residents of the building signed a petition addressed to the local authorities.
They requested an inspection because they were concerned that the renovations had compromised the structural strength of their building.
The answer was that "no deviation was found" from the original architectural design.
Nurgul now wonders why the call for help was ignored and whether the authorities "even looked at the building when they wrote this response."
As soon as the report arrived, the prosecution initiated criminal proceedings.
The interior designer of the cafe on the ground floor and the engineer most responsible for the original construction of the building were arrested in September 2023 and are awaiting trial.
A warrant was also issued for the investor's arrest, but it was not executed, probably because of his advanced age.
His lawyer rejected accusations that his client was responsible for the demolition of the building and blamed it on later alterations to it.
The attorney has not yet responded to our request for additional comment.
The owners of the cafe, whose arrest the prosecution also requested, have since disappeared and are on the run.
In September of last year, they took to social media to deny that they were responsible for any building code violations during the renovation of the ground floor.
Local authorities have yet to be consulted.
We also asked the Turkish Ministry of the Interior for a comment, but we have not yet received any response.
The legacy of the Egzi building
Arrests and criminal indictments are not unique to the Ezgi case.
Dozens of lawsuits have been filed due to poor construction and illegal alterations to buildings throughout the earthquake-affected areas.
In July last year, the Turkish Ministry of Justice announced that more than 350 people had been arrested in such cases.
While working on her case, Nurgul also helped others, sharing what she learned about building codes and construction, as well as her skills in finding publicly available information.
She says she is determined to find those responsible for demolishing the building, to make sure no one tries to circumvent or violate building regulations in the future.
"Perhaps because of the Ezzi building, such things will not happen again in the future. I'm struggling to set an example."
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