President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan spent the first day of Ramadan with earthquake survivors in the Kahramanmaraş province, as he inaugurated the groundbreaking ceremony for building houses in the quake-hit province Thursday.
Speaking to earthquake survivors living at the container complex in the Karacasu district, Erdoğan said there is no rest or pause until the quake-hit provinces are reconstructed and revived.
"Let's not forget that pain is relieved through sharing. With this understanding, we want to turn Ramadan into a solidarity campaign for the earthquake-stricken areas," he said, adding that municipalities across the country have decided to carry out their Ramadan activities in the quake-hit areas.
The president pledged to heal the wounds caused by last month's massive earthquakes in southern regions of the country.
Citing the government's previous rehabilitation efforts after the series of natural disasters that have occurred in Türkiye such as the wildfires and floods, Erdoğan said they will also heal the wounds from the Feb. 6 earthquakes in a short time.
"There is no other country in the world other than Türkiye that can come to the stage of rebuilding in such a short time in the face of a disaster that has caused such severe destruction in such a large area," he told the first groundbreaking ceremony for 17,902 disaster and village houses in southern Kahramanmaraş province.
The deadly quakes will not take away Türkiye's will to succeed and its determination to actualize its vision of the "Century of Türkiye" initiative, Erdoğan said, adding: "While strengthening our existing organized industries, we are establishing a new organized industrial zone in (Kahramanmaraş' district of) Afşin."
"We have rolled up our sleeves to build 77,057 disaster houses and 30,310 village houses in Kahramanmaras after the damage assessments," he added.
Erdoğan reiterated his pledge to hand over quake victims' permanent houses within a year.
Over 50,000 people have died in the earthquakes, with at least 12,307 in Kahramanmaraş, Erdoğan said.
On Feb. 6, magnitude 7.7 and 7.6 quakes struck 11 Turkish provinces-Adana, Adıyaman, Diyarbakır, Elazığ, Hatay, Gaziantep, Kahramanmaraş, Kilis, Malatya, Osmaniye, and Şanlıurfa.
Over 13.5 million people in Türkiye have been affected by the quakes as well as many others in northern Syria.
