Everyone has heard and seen the tragic event that occurred at the dawn of February 6, 2023, the earthquake that struck southern Turkey and northern Syria, which was a painful catastrophe that caused great damage to lives, buildings, and infrastructure such as roads and airports.

To this day, operations to rescue earthquake victims from the rubble continue, and the Turkish President said in his speech on Tuesday that more than 8000 Turkish citizens have been rescued so far.

In this article, we will mention how the Turkish government dealt with this catastrophe and how it responded to the event in a quick manner and with huge efforts.

The largest reconstruction campaign undertaken by the Turkish government

The Turkish Minister of Environment and Urban Development revealed, after conducting a damage assessment, that more than 41.000 buildings were damaged or collapsed as a result of the earthquakes that struck southern Turkey on February 6, 2023, announcing a housing and reconstruction campaign for the region that will be launched before the end of this month.

President Erdogan's speech 8 days after the incident

A week after the devastating earthquake in Turkey, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan delivered a speech during his visit to the affected areas, in which he stated:

• We will continue search and rescue work until the last victim is recovered from under the rubble. There are 28.000 Turkish soldiers performing their duties in the earthquake zones.
• 98% of the buildings demolished as a result of the earthquake were built before 1999.
• All Turkish and international institutions, ministries, and teams, supported by aircraft and equipment, worked in search and rescue operations and distributed aid to earthquakeaffected people.
• 84 countries sent teams to assist in search and rescue operations, and we also received calls from all leaders who expressed their grief and sent their condolences.
• Starting from the beginning of next March, we will start building 30.000 housing units. Within months, we will gradually start building all residential apartments away from earthquake fault lines.
• We will build every house and workplace that was destroyed or became unusable due to the earthquake, and we will hand it over to its owner.
• Our banking sector allocated part of its profits for 2022, which is currently 50 billion Turkish liras (about 2.64 billion dollars), to combat the effects of earthquakes.
• We will provide material support to the families of the earthquake victims amounting to 100.000 Turkish liras to meet their needs.
• I want our people to wait just one year to return everything as it was.

Earthquake insurance in Istanbul

It is worth noting that this catastrophe resulted from several reasons, including that the earthquake was strong (7.8 degrees on the Richter scale in the city of Gaziantep, and the other earthquake was 7.5 degrees on the Richter scale in the city of Kahramanmaras, in addition to more than 4 thousand aftershocks that were recorded after the earthquake, between 6 and 16 February). Also, most of the buildings in the earthquake-hit areas are old, they were built before 1999, that is, before the state imposed the Disaster Prevention and Earthquake Insurance Law.

It is not possible to build in Istanbul today without meeting the requirements of earthquake resistance, as earthquake insurance in Turkey is compulsory insurance that protects construction costs after damage to the building as a result of natural disasters such as earthquakes, fires and collapses, and provides financial support to real estate owners to rebuild later, this is what it was introduced by the Turkish government after the devastating 1991 earthquake that claimed many lives and caused many material and moral losses. This insurance is extracted from the Natural Disaster Insurance Corporation known as “DASK”, which is directly supervised by the Turkish Ministry of Finance.