Faced with the urgency of the situation, Turkey and Syria each on their side very quickly appealed for international aid, Monday, February 6, to cope with the consequences of the deadly earthquake which occurred not far from their common border. The epicenter of the earthquake, whose provisional toll on Tuesday morning was over 4,300 dead, including nearly 3,000 in Turkey, is near the town of Gaziantep, 60 kilometers north of Syria.
Given the extent of the damage, the appeal of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was immediately followed by effects: many countries, starting with European states, often at odds with him, immediately announced the dispatch of rescue personnel, in an attempt to extricate survivors as quickly as possible. “We have activated the EU Civil Protection Mechanism. The EU Emergency Response Coordination Center coordinates the deployment of European rescue teams,” tweeted European Commissioner for Crisis Management Janez Lenarcic. France has, in this context, decided to send, as of Monday evening, 139 rescuers, firefighters and members of civil security. Thirty volunteers from the Pompiers sans frontières association were to follow on Tuesday.
Greece has also shown solidarity, despite the many disputes that poison relations between the two neighbours. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis reached Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the phone to offer him a “immediate help”. The United States, India, China and Russia also offered their assistance, as did Ankara’s allies in the Caucasus, Azerbaijan, or the Gulf, Qatar, as well as the United Arab Emirates, with which Turkey is in full rapprochement.
Ukraine ready to help Ankara
Even war-torn Ukraine, nearly a year after the Russian invasion, has offered to mobilize relief workers to send them to the affected Turkish regions. President Volodymyr Zelensky himself has indicated that his country is “ready to provide the necessary assistance”. kyiv is seeking to heal its relations with Ankara, which has provided it with drones and is in a position to mediate with Moscow. But the Ukrainian leader did not bother to mention Syria, one of the few states to have so far supported the Russian invasion unleashed by the head of the Kremlin, who is also the main protector of dictator Bashar al-Assad in Damascus.
kyiv’s reaction proves it: things are more complicated for Syria, a country torn apart by twelve years of civil war, and whose leaders have been subject to international sanctions since the start of the conflict in 2011. “The quake-affected regions of northwestern Syria have already been devastated by civil war,” says a humanitarian from the Handicap International association present on the spot.
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