When Mutlujan Kilic saw his president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, calling on the people to resist Friday’s attempt coup and march on the streets, he knew what he had to do.
His father, about to leave himself for the presidential palace himself, said no. Kilic, 18, went anyway.
On Sunday morning, his family got a call from Ankara’s forensic authority telling them to collect their son’s body. He had died in the clashes and all that remained was his left torso, his face and limbs sheared off.
“We don’t know what to do, we are poor, simple people,” said his uncle, Dede Yegit.
A Turkish foreign ministry spokesman said on Sunday that more than 290 people, including “more than 100 coup plotters”, had been killed over the weekend and 1,400 people wounded.
Dozens of grieving families have gathered outside the forensic institute in the capital, Ankara, waiting to receive the bodies of loved ones, taking shade under the searing heat in makeshift tents.
Some have been here for nearly two days, having driven immediately from their home towns once the news reached them that loved ones had died.
Nourished by biscuits, juice and tea from Red Crescent volunteers, they nursed wounds and commiserated with others who shared their loss.
“The corpses were burned, all burned,” said Mehmet, a civil servant whose nephew, a special forces soldier called Yacub Surucu, was killed in the bombing of their headquarters in the city along with 16 others.
His nephew had served in Turkish missions in Afghanistan and Azerbaijan, as well as fighting with Turkish security forces battling a Kurdish insurgency in the east. He loved his country, he said.
The family tried to call his phone when the special forces headquarters in Ankara was attacked on Friday evening, but heard nothing. Then his colleagues called with the terrible news.
“He was a patriot, in love with his country and flag,” said Mehmet. “We cried, we shouted, we burst into tears, but there was nothing to do. It was his duty to protect his country.
“We all want peace in the world and our country, why this bloodshed?” he added. “There is no love in Turkey.”
Nearby, Ahmet smoked a cigarette after a day and a half of waiting for his cousin’s body, another special forces officer who died in the same blast.
He had left his wife, and his recently-born baby boy, who was still in an incubator in hospital after a premature birth in Istanbul, and driven to Ankara before the coup unfolded. Ahmet made the same trip, to collect his cousin’s body.
“They told us the body was too burned, he was unidentifiable,” said Ahmet, looking down. “He was a patriot, and an angel to me, we grew up together, he never refused anybody anything.
“I still don’t believe it,” he said. “I can’t believe he is lost, he did not deserve to leave.”
Coming to terms with the carnage will be difficult. Some blame the coup plotters, some the government for failing to anticipate it, and others a mixture of the two.
Ahmet said he did not want any of his family serving with the government any more.
“He fought terror in Diyarbakir for many years and survived, and he came here to die at the hands of his own military,” he said. “It is unacceptable that our people, the people we grew up with, killed my cousin.”
