Turkey-Syria Earthquake Toll Reach 35,000, Turkey Praises India’s Help

Manas Dasgupta

NEW DELHI, Feb 13: The Pakistani prime minister Shehbaz Sharif claimed that an anonymous person belonging to his country has donated an hefty 30 million dollars for the earthquake victims in Turkey and Syria as the Turkish government highly appreciated India’s help for the disaster-stricken people with the death toll in last week’s temblor crossed 35,000 mark on Monday.

As rescue teams started to wind down the search for survivors and the aid effort shifted to hundreds of thousands of people made homeless, Turkish media reported a handful of people were still being pulled from the rubble as excavators dug through ruined cities. The confirmed death toll rose to 35,224 as officials and medics said 31,643 people had died in Turkey and 3,581 in Syria after the February 6 earthquake, the fifth deadliest since the start of the 21st century.

The United Nations has decried the failure to ship desperately needed aid to war-torn regions of Syria and warned that the toll is set to rise even higher as experts caution that hopes for finding people alive dim with each passing day. “Send any stuff you can because there are millions of people here and they all need to be fed,” Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu appealed to Turks late Sunday. In Kahramanmaras, close to the epicentre, 30,000 tents have been installed, 48,000 people are sheltering in schools and another 11,500 in sports halls, he said.

While hundreds of rescue teams were still working, efforts had ended in seven parts of the province, he added. In Antakya, clean-up teams started to evacuate rubble and erect basic toilets as the telephone network started to come back in parts of the town. The city was patrolled by a strong police and military presence which authorities deployed to prevent looting following several incidents over the weekend.

Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay late Sunday said 1,08,000 buildings were damaged across the quake-hit zone with 1.2 million people being housed in student accommodation and 4,00,000 people evacuated from the affected region. Aid packages, mainly clothes, were opened and spread across the streets in Hatay province. One video showed aid workers throwing clothes randomly into a crowd as people tried to grab whatever they could.

A convoy with supplies for northwest Syria arrived via Turkey, but the UN’s relief chief Martin Griffiths said more was needed for millions whose homes were destroyed. “We have so far failed the people in northwest Syria. They rightly feel abandoned. Looking for international help that hasn’t arrived,” Griffiths said on Twitter.

In many areas, rescue teams said they lacked sensors and advanced equipment, leaving them reduced to carefully searching the rubble with shovels or only their hands. “If we had this kind of equipment, we would have saved hundreds of lives, if not more,” said Alaa Moubarak, head of civil defence in Jableh, northwest Syria.

Supplies have been slow to arrive in Syria, where years of conflict have ravaged the healthcare system, and parts of the country remain under the control of rebels battling the government of President Bashar al-Assad, which is under Western sanctions.

But a 10-truck UN convoy crossed into northwest Syria via the Bab al-Hawa border crossing carrying shelter kits, plastic sheeting, rope, blankets, mattresses and carpets, media reports said. Bab al-Hawa is the only point for international aid to reach people in rebel-held areas of Syria after nearly 12 years of civil war, after other crossings were closed under pressure from China and Russia.

The head of the World Health Organization met Assad in Damascus on Sunday and said the Syrian leader had voiced readiness for more border crossings to help bring aid into the rebel-held northwest. “He was open to considering additional cross-border access points for this emergency,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters. “The compounding crises of conflict, Covid, cholera, economic decline and now the earthquake have taken an unbearable toll,” Tedros said a day after visiting Aleppo.

While Damascus had given the all-clear for aid convoys to go ahead from government areas, Tedros said the WHO was still waiting for a green light from rebel-held areas before going in. Assad looked forward to further “efficient cooperation” with the UN agency to improve the shortage in supplies, equipment and medicines, his presidency said.

While Assad thanked the United Arab Emirates for providing “huge relief and humanitarian aid”, with pledges of tens of millions of dollars, Turkey’s Ambassador to India Firat Sunel on Monday thanked India for sending relief materials to his country. Taking to social media, Mr Sunel tweeted, “Another batch of emergency in-kind donations from the people of India is on the way to Turkiye. @TurkishAirlines @TK_INDIA carries the aids on a daily basis to the earthquake hit region, free of charge. “THANK YOU INDIA! Each tent, each blanket or sleeping bag are of vital importance for the hundreds of thousands of earthquake survivors,” he said.

The seventh ‘Operation Dost’ flight reached earthquake-hit Syria on Sunday with over 23 tons of relief material which was received by Deputy Minister of Local Administration & Environment Moutaz Douaji at Damascus airport. Sunel said last week that ‘Operation Dost’ symbolises the friendship between India and Turkey. Speaking at the Hindon Air Base in Ghaziabad, he said, “Operation Dost is a symbolic operation. It already proves that we are friends. We have to deepen our relations.”

As India received accolades from the affected countries, Pakistan itself in the grip of a major economic crisis and depending on aids from the International Monetary Fund to survive, made a tall claim that one of its national made a hefty donation of 30 million dollars for the earthquake-hit people of Turkey. Sharif himself took to Twitter to announce the “donation from an anonymous Pakistani” but did not reveal how he knew the donor was a Pakistani.

Mr. Sharif said an anonymous national from his country walked into the Turkish embassy in the United States and donated the aid. ”Deeply moved by the example of an anonymous Pakistani who walked into Turkish embassy in the US & donated $30 million for earthquake victims in Turkiye & Syria. These are such glorious acts of philanthropy that enable humanity to triumph over the seemingly insurmountable odds,” Sharif wrote.

But instead of accolades, it immediately raised questions about the background of the donor and a number of Pakistani citizens put questions on the social media why the person, if he was Pakistani, did not come forward with the donation when Pakistan was reeling under unprecedented floods earlier this year.

Author Ayesha Siddiqa said it was interesting why the philanthropist did not walk into a Pakistani embassy and donate money for flood relief work. Another user wrote, “How do you know that the anonymous person was a Pakistani? Could be an Indian also. The anonymous person did not tell his name but told his nationality. Great.”  A third hit out at Shehbaz Sharif and his government, and wrote: “There is a reason why such philanthropist doesn’t walk into Pakistan’s embassy! Because of corrupt money launderers like you!!”

Another added, “This anonymous Pakistani could’ve donated more such amount for his own country Where u r a PM! Pakistan is in desperate need of money but why he did not do? He knows thieves sitting in govt would not spend his money judiciously. Time to ponder and learn to Die in shame.”

Meanwhile, after days of grief and anguish, anger in Turkey has been growing over the poor quality of buildings as well as the government’s response to the country’s worst disaster in nearly a century. Three people were put behind bars by Sunday and seven more have been detained— including two developers who were trying to cross into the neighbouring ex-Soviet Georgia.