Sweden, the current president of the European Union (EU), is set to organize a donor conference in Brussels on March 16 to mobilize support from the international community for the victims of the earthquake in Türkiye and Syria, Foreign Minister Tobias Billström said Monday.
“Sweden wants to do whatever it can regarding the devastating earthquake,” Billström told reporters ahead of the EU Foreign Affairs Council meeting.
The conference, which was previously announced as scheduled for early March, will coordinate with the EU Commission and aim to mitigate the “horrible” consequences of the disaster “as much as possible," according to Billström.
“We expect high participation in this conference and hope to raise more funds for the people of Türkiye and Syria to do our best,” he concluded.
Twelve EU members have already provided 50,000 winter-proof family tents, 100,000 blankets, and 50,000 heaters immediately after the disaster. At the same time, the block dispatched rescue teams, including 1,651 helpers and 106 rescue dogs, and pledged to send more tents, blankets, and heaters to quake-hit regions in Türkiye.
Additionally, the EU Commission mobilized 500 emergency shelters, 8,000 beds, and 2,000 tents, with President Ursula von der Leyen assuring the two countries could “count on the EU" for help.
Europe must stand firmly by Türkiye in the wake of the disaster since Ankara is both “part of the family” and the European Union’s civil protection mechanism, another EU official, part of that agency, separately said Saturday.
“No country in the world was prepared to deal with the severity of the disaster that unfolded in southern Türkiye,” the official noted.
At least 41,156 people were killed and over 108,000 others injured after the magnitude 7.7 and 7.6 earthquakes struck southern Türkiye within less than 10 hours on Feb. 6, affecting around 13 million people, according to the latest official figures, followed by 6,210 aftershocks since.
The earthquakes, centered in Kahramanmaraş, also hit nine other provinces-Hatay, Gaziantep, Adıyaman, Malatya, Adana, Diyarbakır, Kilis, Osmaniye and Şanlıurfa.
Several countries in the region, as far as Lebanon and the island of Cyprus, also felt the strong tremors, with neighboring Syria taking the more significant damage after Türkiye.
The war-ravaged country’s death toll has climbed above 5,800, with nearly 15,000 injured.
Türkiye has begun winding down rescue efforts in eight provinces while operations continue in Kahramanmaraş and Hatay.
