On February 2023, 53.000, when two devastating earthquakes struck southern Turkey, killing more than XNUMX people, a relentless search and rescue effort was launched.
But two years later, dozens of families are still searching for their loved ones.
At least 30 of the missing are children.
Four-year-old Emir was at home with his family when the earthquake struck.
The bodies of his mother, father and 10-year-old brother were found in the ruins of their apartment building in Antakya, a city on the Syrian border.
But there was no sign or sound of him.
His aunt, Nursen Kisa, arrived at the collapsed building an hour after the earthquake and waited by the ruins for more than two weeks while search and rescue operations were underway.
"We thought we could find him, or at least piece together pieces of his clothes, find some remains, any kind of trace."
"But there was nothing. Not in the ruins or among the bodies found," she says.
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Since then, she has been on a mission to find her missing nephew.
She filed a missing persons report at the police station, only to receive a call three months later from authorities inquiring about Emir's well-being.
They told her that they had no documentation showing that Emir had disappeared and that the original report had probably been lost.
The entire process had to be started over, while in the meantime Nurten posted pictures of her nephew all over social media in the hope that someone would recognize him and visited dozens of orphanages across Turkey.
Her sister's grave was exhumed for DNA samples so they could be compared with remains in the cemetery of missing people.
None of these attempts bore fruit.
Nurten said she would occasionally receive calls from local authorities asking how Emir was doing, indicating that her nephew was probably not yet officially listed as missing.
How many children are missing?
Two years after the earthquake, there are still conflicting reports about the number of missing.
In April 2023, two months after the earthquake, "297 people were reported missing, 86 of whom were children," according to the then Ministry of Internal Affairs.
In November 2024, the current Minister of Interior, Ali Yerlikaya, announced that 75 earthquake victims were still missing.
Thirty of them are children, he said.
However, the main opposition party said it had a list of 140 missing people, 38 of whom were children.
They shared the list with Yerlikava, but received no response, they told BBC News Turkish.
The Interior Ministry did not take into account the missing whose families had officially accepted their deaths, said Sema Guledz, a spokeswoman for a foundation established to search for the missing.
This could be the reason for the conflicting numbers, she claims.
After the earthquake, various claims were made about children being rescued from under the rubble but then disappearing, suggesting they had been abducted.
The authorities denied these claims.
In January 2024, the ruling party and its right-wing ally voted against a parliamentary motion calling for an investigation into the missing children.
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How do authorities search for missing people?
Last year, a commission was formed to investigate missing persons cases within the Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency (AFAD), the government's disaster management agency operating under the Ministry of Interior.
AFAD used several techniques to search for the missing, said Sema Guledz, whose 24-year-old son is missing.
These techniques range from comparing DNA samples taken from relatives of the missing with bodies buried without identification, to using facial recognition systems and comparing images of missing persons with existing police reports, she said.
However, opposition figures have accused the authorities of irregularities or incompetence, citing the example of a young woman who was buried under a different identity only to be exhumed and identified a year later.
"There could be dozens of others buried under false identities," said Nermin Yildirim Kara, a lawmaker from the main opposition party.
She also claimed that some of the rubble had been cleared before the necessary scanning, citing as an example the famous apartment building in Antakya where the whereabouts of 48 people are still unknown.
"The rubble was cleared in such a hurry that some of the remains may have been destroyed in the process," she said.
BBC News Turkish reached out to both AFAD and the Ministry of Interior with interview requests, but received no response.
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Painful testimonies
Meanwhile, the families of the missing continue to search for answers in agony.
"A proper scan wasn't done, they removed the rubble right away, and we couldn't stop them," says Ayse Ambarcioglu, whose sister and six-month-old nephew are missing.
"It's already been two years."
"What are the authorities supposed to do now, bring a piece of bone and say this belonged to your sister?" she said, expressing complete loss of hope for any resolution.
"We would have been satisfied with even a single bone, but nothing was found," says Caner Jurdakul, whose sister, brother-in-law and their four-year-old twin daughters went missing after the earthquake.
The cities crippled by devastating earthquakes in southern Turkey are full of such testimonies.
But many relatives of the missing are determined to continue their search for answers.
"There is nothing yet that can prove whether my nephew Emir is dead or alive," said Nursen Kisa.
"I will never succumb to pressure and declare him deceased."
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