‘I can’t believe that they’re gone’: California man loses 14 relatives in Turkey quake
Nearly two weeks ago, Bakersfield resident Sherry Jones got a text message from her ex-husband, Mervan Ergun, informing her that there had been a large earthquake in Turkey and Syria.
Jones, 49, immediately texted him back and asked if anyone had been injured. Ergun’s entire extended family lived in Turkey, specifically in Hatay province, one of the regions hit hardest by the magnitude 7.8 quake on Feb. 6 and its aftershocks.
A couple of hours later, Ergun, 41, replied, telling her that his mother, two sisters and a brother had been killed, along with their children and spouses.
“I didn’t believe it,” Jones said. “I thought he was playing a horrible joke, and then it soon became clear that he wasn’t.”
In total, Ergun lost 14 family members, including two aunts and an uncle. Mervan’s 38-year-old brother, Mecdi Ergun, Mecdi’s wife and their two children, as well as his 40-year-old sister, Meyse Yalman, her husband and their three children were killed when their apartment buildings collapsed during the quake.
In the days since the magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck Turkey, search-and-rescue teams, including one from Los Angeles County, have been a ubiquitous presence.
Jones is acting as a spokesperson for Ergun, a Bakersfield resident who’s currently in Turkey and organizing the burials of his relatives.
“He said, ‘It’d be one thing if it was just one family member and how hard that would be, but to lose 11 close family members at one time is just almost unbearable,’” Jones said. “For me, I still feel as though I’m a part of their family, and they still treat me as such. I can’t believe that they’re gone.”
Mervan’s 70-year-old mother, Fatma Ergun, and 30-year-old sister, Merve Ergun, the youngest of 11 siblings in the family, were the primary caretakers for Mervan’s father, Abdullah Ergun, who suffers from Alzheimer’s, and Mervan’s brother, Mesut Ergun, who is developmentally delayed and blind.
The four of them lived together in Antakya, and when the earthquake struck, Mervan’s mother and sister died while his father and brother survived.
“Mervan’s mother probably did the best in managing him,” Jones said of her former father-in-law. “And now she’s gone and the siblings are trying their best to take care of him.”
On Monday, a 6.4 earthquake struck Turkey and Syria, two weeks after the temblor that killed tens of thousands of people and destroyed thousands of buildings in the province.
The catastrophic magnitude 7.8 earthquake that struck Turkey a week ago should be a warning to Californians.
At least eight people have been killed and 294 people injured in the latest quake, which was followed by a second, magnitude 5.8 quake and dozens of other aftershocks.
The recent quakes were centered in the town of Defne, in Turkey’s Hatay province. Ergun and his surviving relatives were “scared” by the earthquakes this week but managed to get through them unscathed, Jones said.
After learning of the deaths of his family members, Ergun frantically searched for a way to get to Turkey, according to Jones. He was able to fly out of Los Angeles to Istanbul, but there were no flights from there to southern Turkey. Ergun took a bus part of the way and ended up walking until he was about 30 miles from Antayka, when someone picked him up on the road and drove him the rest of the way.
Ergun helped find the bodies of his sister, Meyse, her husband and their three children in the rubble of their collapsed apartment building. On Thursday, he located the bodies of his brother Mecdi and Mecdi’s wife and two children.
They were buried in the nearby village of Kirancik.
“He said the city smells of death, everywhere they go,” Jones said. “There are families that are waiting for rescue crews to come in and pull their missing family members out so they can lay them to rest. They don’t have any hope that anybody is alive, given the state of the buildings and the time that’s passed.”
American and Turkish search and rescue teams pull a teenage boy alive from a quake-damaged building in Hatay, Turkey.
Jones said she first met Ergun in 2007 over the internet, and after talking online for six months, she traveled to Turkey and they got engaged. They came to the United States at the end of 2008 and got married at the beginning of 2009. They lived together in Bakersfield until they divorced in August 2021.
Jones and Ergun share two sons — 13-year-old Grant-Abdullah and 9-year-old Lance. In 2018, the former couple went back to Turkey with their children for vacation.
“They didn’t treat me any different,” Jones said of her ex-husband’s family. “I’m the mother of his children, and they will always see me as his wife. They knew we weren’t together, but they still treated me as such and welcomed me with open arms.”
Jones said Grant-Abdullah has been taking the deaths very hard after having recently met all of his cousins and extended family members.
“He’s struggling a little bit himself because his memories are very fresh and he’s bonded with his cousins and his grandma and aunts and uncles that are now gone,” Jones said.
Jones has also set up a GoFundMe page to help raise money for the family.
Sending money is the best way to help right now, but Americans can also sponsor asylum seekers and visit areas once they’re rebuilt.
Fatma Erdun, Jones said, had been a “very strong matriarch” for the family.
“He had a very strong mother and winning her over was difficult, but from what I understand, I did it,” she said. “That meant a lot knowing how particular she was and the expectation that she had of people. It’s hard to believe that she’s gone.”
Jones said the family is struggling to process what happened and how they can move forward.
“They’re afraid to be in their homes right now because what if another earthquake hits?” she said. “It’s a tremendous loss. They’re an extremely close family. That’s one of the things that attracted me to Mervan — he was very close to his family.”
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