'Miracle' baby reunited with mom 54 days after Turkey earthquake

A baby rescued from the rubble five days after a devastating earthquake hit Turkey in February was finally reunited with her mother more than two months after the devastating event. 

Three-and-a-half-month-old Vetin Begdas was rescued from the rubble of a destroyed building in the Turkish province of Hatay. The child’s mother, Yasemin Begdas, was thought to have been killed by the Feb. 6 earthquake. 

After being saved from the torn building, the baby, nicknamed “Gizen” or “Mystery” by rescue workers, was cared for at a hospital in Adana. 

Fifty-four days after the disaster, Turkey’s Family and Social Services Minister Derya Yanik reunited the mother and child after a DNA test confirmed their relationship.

Yanik shared a video of the reunion on Twitter on Monday, showing the mother holding her daughter while in a hospital bed. Begdas’ husband and two other children died in the earthquake. 

“One of the most priceless tasks in the world is reuniting a mother with her child,” Yanik said. “Being a part of that happiness meant a lot to us as well.”

“The baby is truly a miracle. The fact that she survived and had no health problems pulled at our heartstrings,” Yanik added.

The fateful 7.8 magnitude earthquake that struck near the Turkey-Syria border and its strong aftershocks killed more than 46,000 people in Turkey and an additional 6,000 in Syria.

More than 135 children remain under the care of the government after the earthquakes, according to the Family and Social Services Ministry. The identity of at least 33 of them remains unknown because they are too young to identify themselves. 

At least ten cities in Turkey were affected, including Gaziantep, Kahramanmaras, Hatay, Osmaniye, Adiyaman, Malatya, Sanliurfa, Adana, Diyarbakir, and Kilis. In Syria, most of the deaths were concentrated in the provinces of Aleppo, Latakia, Hama, and Tartus. The tremor was also felt in Lebanon and Cyprus.

The earthquake is the strongest that has hit Turkey since 1939, when a similar earthquake killed more than 30,000 people, according to USGS. In the past 25 years, only seven earthquakes of magnitude seven or greater have hit the region.