Türkiye to continue to strengthen infrastructure: Erdoğan

ANTALYA

Scores of citizens affected by the massive fire disaster in the Turkish holiday resort city of Antalya’s Manavgat and Akseki districts have received keys to their new houses within the scope of the Türkiye Disaster Response Plan, with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan pledging to continue to strengthen the country’s infrastructure.

“We put into action the Türkiye Disaster Response Plan and responded with all the means of our state to this disaster, which burned our 61,500 hectares of forest along with our lungs,” President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on Jan. 8 during the key delivery ceremony of village houses built following the massive Manavgat-Akseki fire disaster.

Erdoğan said that approximately 300 million Turkish Liras were provided by the state to support the citizens affected by the disaster.

He emphasized that over 8,000 personnel, 40 aircraft and 2,000 land vehicles participated in the efforts to extinguish the fire and that construction of 900 new houses, four village centers and a mosque began after the damage assessment.

“Today, we deliver the keys to 427 houses to their owners. The village centers in Evrenseki, Kalemler and Kepezbeleni are almost complete. We will complete the rest of the houses and other constructions as soon as possible,” Erdoğan said.

“There is no other example in the world who can conduct such a quick disaster management,” he added.

“Thanks to the system we established with the support of our nation, we have not heard our people cry ‘where is the state?’ during any of the disasters that recently took place. On the contrary, only the images of our people who prayed for their state, which rushed to their help in the aftermath of every disaster, remain in our memories,” Erdoğan said.

“Inshallah, we will never let Türkiye fall below this level. We will continue to develop our disaster response system and strengthen our infrastructure by utilizing all the technological means available.”

Underlining that the works on the regeneration areas are almost complete, Erdoğan said: “In the past spring and autumn months, we planted 135,000 kilos of Turkish pine, 2,320 kilos of black pine, and 6,200 kilos of cedar seeds in these areas.”

He conveyed that Türkiye has completed the works on 90 percent of the areas damaged by the fire by planting 2,750,000 saplings.

“Hopefully, we will complete the remaining areas this season,” Erdoğan added.