Erdoğan pledges to revive quake-hit region

HATAY

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan promised on Feb. 20 to revive the provinces hit by the devastating earthquakes, saying the government will do everything possible to protect the region’s common heritage.

“All our citizens living in the earthquake zone may rest assured that we will revive all our cities with their houses, workplaces, industries, agriculture, historical and cultural values, not allowing the slightest regression or the slightest neglect,” Erdoğan said at the Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency (AFAD) Coordination Center in Hatay.

“We as the state and the nation will protect this region that harbors not only ours but also the entire humanity’s common heritage,” he added.

Erdoğan, accompanied by Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahçeli, visited the quake-hit southern provinces of Hatay and Kahramanmaraş.

In Hatay, Erdoğan met with Syriac Orthodox Church Patriarch Mor Ignatius Aphrem II, Syriac Orthodox Church Patriarchal Vicar Yusuf Çetin, Archbishop Patriarchal Secretary Joseph Bali, Reverend Haitham Bahhu and Reverend Ghassan Al Chami.

All the ministries, institutions, municipalities and nongovernmental organizations were immediately mobilized after the two Kahramanmaraş-epicenter earthquakes struck on Feb. 6, the president said.

“We have mobilized all the means of our state and our nation to reach the region, launch the search and rescue works, and organize the relief efforts. Aside from those directly in charge of such works, we have sent all civil servants and all nongovernmental organizations, who can take part in the search and rescue efforts and debris removal works, as well as in relief and security works, from all our 81 provinces to the earthquake zone,” he stated.

Erdoğan underlined that 271,000 support, relief and security personnel, over 35,000 of them search and rescue staff, have taken part in the works carried out since the moment the earthquake struck and that over 12,000 pieces of heavy equipment from various provinces of Türkiye have been used in the debris removal works and infrastructure activities.

Further stressing that 77 planes, 120 helicopters, 38 ships and 45 unmanned aerial vehicles had taken part in rescue, relief and evacuation efforts, Erdoğan said that hundreds of nongovernmental organizations, particularly Kızılay, from across Türkiye have stood with the earthquake victims.

Speaking to reporters in Kahramanmaraş on the same day, Erdoğan pointed out that 10,000 container houses have already been erected and that as many as 200,000 containers can be set up across the areas affected by the quake if need be.

“We are about to take concrete steps regarding permanent houses. We will break ground and begin building 45,067 houses in Kahramanmaraş in March. We will take the first step in March to build 200,000 houses in the 11 provinces,” he said.

The president noted that the government would increase this number to the necessary level in the following months in the entire earthquake zone. “I believe that we will achieve these efforts of revival and construction within a year, as has been in previous earthquakes,” he added.

MHP leader Bahçeli, for his part, drew attention to the efforts exerted by the government to heal the wounds inflicted by the earthquake as soon as possible and voiced full solidarity with the president.