Turkish evacuees from Gaza were exhausted but relieved as they almost shuffled into the terminal of Istanbul Airport Monday night. They are not in the mood for genuine joy as they long for the Palestinian city battered by constant Israeli bombardment, which killed thousands in one month.
A group of 87 people, including Turkish and Turkish Cypriot citizens, disembarked a Turkish Airlines plane sent for them to Egypt earlier. Evacuees were allowed through the Rafah border crossing, the only connection of Gaza to the outside world amid Israel’s relentless blockade.
Representatives of the Foreign Ministry and officials from the Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) welcomed 60 Turkish and 27 Turkish Cypriot citizens at the airport. They were served tea and cookies as buses waited for them. Those with residences or families outside Istanbul were accommodated at hotels by AFAD.
Özgül Smery told Demirören News Agency (DHA) that they had been at the border crossing for three days and were very tired. “I am glad to be in my country, but I am worried about who I left behind,” she said.
“My grandchildren and daughter-in-law would accompany me, but their names were not on the evacuation list. So, they stayed at the crossing,” Smery said. “I hope peace will come back, but it is likely it will take time.”
Sümeyra Yıldız, another evacuee, said they felt comfort when they arrived in Türkiye. “But we will never be fully well until Palestine is free again. The struggle will continue,” she said.
Forty-four Turks who traveled from Gaza to Egypt at the weekend arrived in Istanbul on Sunday.
Speaking in parliament on Monday, Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said Türkiye was working with Egyptian and Israeli authorities to get another 983 Turkish nationals and their relatives out of Gaza.
“Until today, we have secured the exit from Gaza of 170 of our citizens and their relatives,” he said, adding there would be further evacuations on Monday and Tuesday.
Ankara has sent some 700 tonnes of humanitarian aid, medical supplies, medicine and medical personnel to Egypt for Gazans. It has said that it wants to set up a field hospital on the Gaza side of the Rafah border crossing.
On Monday, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said he had spoken by phone to his Egyptian and Israeli counterparts to discuss conducting fieldwork inside a “safe zone” in Gaza to find an appropriate location for the field hospital to be set up, adding his counterparts had voiced an openness to coordinating on it and on evacuating children and babies.
Koca welcomed 61 patients, accompanied by 49 relatives, at an airport in the capital, Ankara, on Monday after they were brought from Egypt by a Turkish military cargo plane.
“In terms of protecting human dignity, I think the steps we have taken provide a contribution, though very small,” Koca told reporters at the airport. The priority for evacuations was now Gazan children, babies and wounded civilians, he added.
Koca said last week that Ankara wanted to bring back as many as possible of nearly 1,000 cancer patients from Gaza – most of whom are former patients of a Turkish-Palestinian hospital that shut down because of Israeli attacks. The first 27 patients arrived in Ankara last Thursday. He said on Monday that 150 Gazans had been brought to Türkiye. Most of the patients are cancer patients and eight of the 61 patients who arrived on Monday were in “slightly more serious condition.”
