Quake Kills Many Dreams in Swank Turkish High-Rise

A former legislator planning another run for office died in his penthouse. His neighbors--a prosperous auto parts dealer, wife and two children--were crushed on the first floor. And their neighbors, an up-and-coming pharmacologist and her sister, also perished.

When death tolls in disasters such as last week’s devastating earthquake in northwestern Turkey stagger past 10,000--or 15,000, or 20,000--the tragedy blurs into a faceless mass. Blanket destruction is a great social leveler.

On Ataturk Street in central Izmit, the once bustling industrial city of about half a million people that was at the epicenter of the quake, the only building to collapse completely was a luxury apartment block. More than 60 people died at the site, including some of Izmit’s prominent citizens and successful professionals.

Just about everybody in Izmit had heard of Alaattkin Kurt. One of 11 brothers and sisters, the 50-year-old Kurt had made a life in politics.

He served in parliament from 1987 to 1995 for the right-of-center True Path Party and would have launched another run for office at a party convention next week. His serious face with black mustache and his salt-and-pepper hair peered out from campaign posters around town.

Kurt was scheduled to spend the night of the quake in Gebze, where he had meetings, but at the last minute returned home to the spacious top-floor apartment he owned in the Ubaylar building at 87 Ataturk St., a central boulevard lined with oak trees.

A building engineer by profession, Kurt was one of the first people to move into the Ubaylar when it opened with a certain amount of fanfare five years ago. But lately, he had been saying that he wanted to move. He worried about whether the building’s construction was sound. The apartment shook every time a train passed several blocks away, he told his brother Celalettin.

“He was looking for a new place,” Celalettin said, as he and some of Kurt’s other brothers stood with cellular phones across the street from where the building lay crumpled. Salvage crews were digging through the ruins with a crane and backhoes, searching for the last bodies.

Kurt died with his wife, Hanife, and a son. Two children were rescued, and two others were not home when the quake struck.

Luxury--that’s the word repeated over and over when people describe the Ubaylar building. Its facade was made of green mosaic tiles that literally glistened, and each floor was underlined by stone balconies and had windows framed in polished wood.

The apartments were expensive by local standards. Owning one conveyed a fair amount of status.

None of this was discernible after Aug. 17, when the seven-story, 21-unit building collapsed in what survivors described as a matter of seconds. Like several Turkish contractors, the builder now is under a cloud of suspicion amid questions as to the quality of materials used and whether codes were followed.

Before the quake, however, the prestige clearly was something sought by Cengiz Okan, 35, who moved into a first-floor flat about two years ago with his wife, Semra, and their two children. Okan’s auto parts business was successful, and the family was thrilled to join the good life that the Ubaylar building represented.

The family had just returned from a vacation at a summer home on the Black Sea. Unlike Kurt, Okan was not famous--except to the red-eyed man sitting across the road from 87 Ataturk St.

Okan’s father, Vehbi, sat calmly on a curb and watched layer after layer being peeled from the mountain of debris that had been his eldest son’s home. All of the Okans’ bodies had been recovered except for that of the 4-year-old boy, Ali. And Vehbi was waiting for that final resolution.

“They were so happy when they moved in here,” recalled Vehbi Okan, 60, a gray-haired man with five days’ growth of whiskers.

As he kept vigil, a son ran up with a tattered photo album recovered by a salvage crew. A daughter, Beril, head covered in mourning, began to sob.

The pictures show a medium-built Cengiz and brown-haired Semra proudly showing off their children, spending days at the beach, sitting in their apartment with plush carpeting and lace curtains. Daughter Gulden, 8, is shown with candles on a chocolate birthday cake, then later is trying on a pair of oversized glasses and imitating the grown-ups reading a magazine. Ali, dressed in a blue baby jumpsuit, is held aloft by his dad.

“He always said he lived for his children,” Beril said of Cengiz.

Vehbi Okan said the Ubaylar building was plagued with structural problems from the beginning. A partial collapse during construction had left it slightly separated from the buildings next to it, he said.

“I told my son not to buy this place,” he said. “But he did anyway. It was such a pretty place.”

Mina Sakaya’s family also must have thought it a pretty place.

Sakaya was well known in the community. The local newspaper lamented her death as a symbol of potential cut short.

At 24, she had opened her own pharmacy on prime medical-business real estate near the state hospital. She was never going to get rich at it, though; she too readily gave away medicine to poor customers who couldn’t pay. While other stores carried expensive cosmetics and perfumes, she stocked mostly baby formula.

Known for her ready smile and generosity, she made friends easily with workers, fellow pharmacists and doctors.

The pharmacy was shuttered this week behind a white metal grate and seemingly unscathed by the quake. Sakaya’s desk was covered with yellow notes reminding her of people to call and things to do. Her coffee cup and computer sat untouched, next to a sand hourglass.