Red Crescent sends aid to Turkey’s minorities

ISTANBUL - Anatolia News Agency

Turkish Red Crescent’s (Kızılay) aid material will be sent to those in need through the Agia Triada Greek Orthodox church in Istanbul’s Taksim district.DAILY NEWS photo, Emrah GÜREL

Turkish Red Crescent (Kızılay) provided five tons of aid material to the Agia Triada Greek Orthodox church in Taksim and the Syriac Metropolitan Center in Tarlabaşı under special permission from Fener Greek Patriarchate yesterday.

“Regardless of race, religion, and language; we embrace all the people. We are not interested in politics,” Marmara Regional disaster manager Taşkın Hoşver told the Hürriyet Daily News just before the aid’s distribution.

The Turkish Red Crescent has been providing aid to minority communities in line with their needs for years without the public’s knowledge, Hoşver said. “We meet the leaders of the minority communities and gather information about their needs. Then we provide aid in line with their needs,” Hoşver said.
“Turkey is experiencing a new opening process. So we accelerated the [distribution of] aid under the thought that ‘teardrops have no color,’” Avedis Hilkat, the Turkish Red Crescent chairman’s consultant in charge of the coordination with minority communities said.

Aid is distributed according to the population rates of communities, Hilkat said. Aid from the Red Crescent to the Fener Greek Patriarchate, Turkey’s Armenians Patriarchate, and the Syriac Metropolitan Center could meet their needs for eight months, Hilkat said. In the upcoming days, a certain amount of aid materials will be submitted to the Chief Rabbinate of Turkey.