President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, accompanied by Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahçeli, paid a second visit to the southern province of Hatay on Monday, examining relief work on the ground in the province, which was among those struck by the deadliest earthquakes in Türkiye's recent history on Feb. 6.
Erdoğan, who was scheduled to visit Kahramanmaraş, the province at the epicenter of the earthquake, first met members of search and rescue crews, from miners who arrived from northern Türkiye to crews of gendarmerie forces who helped rescue a large number of people and international teams who arrived from all corners of the globe. Before heading to a disaster coordination center, Erdoğan chatted with crews as his ministers, who have been coordinating the post-earthquake recovery efforts on the ground, accompanied him.
The president has visited all provinces affected by the earthquakes and announced that he would return soon. During his first visit to the region, search and rescue efforts were still underway. He has met survivors who were staying in tents and observed search and rescue work amid the rubble. Erdoğan later visited people injured in the earthquakes who were evacuated to a hospital in Istanbul. Monday's visit was also the first for Bahçeli, head of Erdoğan's key ally, to the disaster zone. Bahçeli, who hails from Osmaniye, one of the provinces affected by the earthquake, has mobilized his party's members for relief efforts in the aftermath of the earthquake.
Erdoğan said earlier that Türkiye would swiftly start reconstruction in provinces affected by what he dubbed as the "disaster of the century," presumably in early March, and pledged to reconstruct thousands of houses for displaced victims within one year. Until then, prefabricated housing units will accommodate homeless locals who prefer to stay in their hometowns. A large number of people have already left disaster-hit provinces, taking shelter with their relatives in other cities, staying at hotels offering free accommodation or elsewhere.
Last week, the Ministry of Environment, Urban Planning and Climate Change announced that 118,000 buildings in the region were either severely damaged or completely demolished in the disaster. Severely damaged buildings will be demolished, while authorities consider starting reconstruction in areas farther from earthquake-hit areas of provinces.
Though the latest earthquakes are dubbed the "disaster of the century" due to their sheer scale and unusually high death toll, earthquakes are nothing out of the ordinary, with thousands of tremors taking place all over the country. Most of Türkiye is located on the Anatolian tectonic plate, which sits between two major plates, the Eurasian and African, and a minor one, the Arabian. As the larger African and Arabian plates shift, Türkiye is squeezed, while the Eurasian plate impedes any northward movement. Thus, Türkiye sits on several fault lines. The country's most potentially devastating fault line is the North Anatolian Fault (NAF), where the Anatolian and Eurasian plates meet. It runs from just south of Istanbul to northeastern Türkiye. The NAF has produced devastating earthquakes throughout history.
