The Turkish government has blasted another horde of allegations regarding humanitarian aid and recovery efforts in Türkiye’s southeast, devastated by massive earthquakes on Feb. 6.
In a weekly bulletin compiled to fight disinformation in both visual and social media, the Presidency’s Directorate of Communications hit back against various claims, including falsehoods about the official death toll, Syrian victims, rescue efforts of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), donations and even about “an impending Istanbul earthquake.”
The bulletins come at the heels of Turkish officials also denying countless other reports as disinformation campaigns designed to “incite chaos” in the disaster zone where thousands of rescue crews and volunteers, both local and international, have been working to save survivors and provide support to the victims now left without homes.
A prominent claim by media outlets has been that “official data does not include unidentified bodies” in the quake-stricken region.
The directorate refuted the accusation, saying, “all of our citizens who lost their lives in the earthquake, whether identified or not, are included in the number of deaths.”
“These numbers include individuals who showed no signs of life or died in hospital after being rescued from the wreckage,” it added.
Following the tremors, Syrian refugees in Türkiye, who were also hit by the disaster, have been targeted by xenophobes with claims that the asylum-seekers were prioritized in delivering humanitarian aid or that some of them were looting homes and shops in the region.
In addition to refuting such claims, the directorate also quashed an accusation by an opposition politician that a Syrian person “stole a firefighter’s mobile phone,” according to an incident unfolding on the screen’s corner while Vice President Fuat Oktay delivered a live statement.
“Police investigation confirmed the person in the footage was not Syrian and the red phone he allegedly ‘stole’ belonged to him,” the directorate said, noting that the person subject to slander would sue his slanderer for compensation and donate the money to quake survivors.
The directorate dismissed claims certain politicians and media outlets raised that “the Ahbap Platform’s efforts are hampered.”
The directorate informed that the Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) continues coordinating the efforts of all aid agencies, rescue teams and volunteers in the disaster zone, stressing that Ahbap Chair Haluk Levent himself expressed the platform “has always received support from all state officials.”
In the wake of the 7.7 and 7.6 magnitude tremors that left more than 42,000 people dead in Türkiye’s 11 provinces, many social media users, citing unidentified “German reports,” alleged that another earthquake would this time strike Türkiye’s top metropolis Istanbul “very soon” and that “the change in the water levels of the Marmara Sea is a harbinger” of it.
“The change in the water level is not because of a tectonic earthquake but a meteorological event caused by the pressure difference,” the directorate explained.
On top of declarations that the “Central Bank’s future expenditures are exempt from audit by the Court of Accounts due to its donations to AFAD,” which was presently debunked, the directorate also shut down claims that “tax offices have seized TL 10,000 state aid provided to disaster victims.”
“Tax offices have not carried out any confiscation for collecting public receivables since the earthquake,” it informed.
“Furthermore, all enforcement proceedings, including those carried out by tax offices, have been suspended by Presidential Decree No. 120, dated Feb. 8, 2023. Because no confiscation was made after the earthquake, even if there was a seizure on the account previously, this seizure has no bearing on the state’s earthquake aid of TL 10,000.”
The directorate recently addressed the claim that “the military was absent in the immediate relief efforts following the earthquake. As a result, the deployment order was issued too late.”
“Immediately after the earthquake occurred on Feb. 6, at 4:17 a.m., the National Defense Ministry requested reports from the General Staff, Land, Air, and Naval Forces Commands at 4.30 a.m., and ordered the TAF Humanitarian Relief Brigade to ‘be ready.’ At 6 a.m., the units of the 2nd Army Command started the search and rescue efforts in the earthquake zone,” it said.
At least 42,310 people were killed, and more than 108,000 were injured in the disaster. The tremors centered in Kahramanmaraş province impacted over 13 million people across 10 other areas, including Adana, Adıyaman, Diyarbakır, Gaziantep, Hatay, Kilis, Malatya, Osmaniye, Şanlıurfa and Elazığ.
Neighboring Syria, too, took the most significant damage after Türkiye, reporting over 5,800 casualties and at least 14,000 injuries.
Separately, a new earthquake that jolted Hatay late Monday left at least six dead and 562 others wounded in Türkiye and over 470 injured in Syria.
