Erdoğan says 'wounds healing' in quake-hit regions

MALATYA

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Friday emphasized the progress made in rebuilding Türkiye's southern regions, devastated by the earthquakes of early 2023, declaring that the "wounds are healing."

“While we are delivering the houses of citizens whose homes were destroyed in the earthquake, we are also rebuilding our cities,” Erdoğan said at a housing delivery ceremony in Malatya.

The event marked the handover of 201,000th new home in the region since the disaster.

"I hope that our new houses will bring good luck. We continue to heal the wounds of the Feb. 6 earthquakes," Erdoğan stated.

He said 45 percent of the planned housing projects had been completed, with 68,700 independent units set to be delivered in Malatya by the end of the year.

Across the entire earthquake zone, nearly 453,000 homes are expected to be ready by then.

“Hopefully, before the end of the year, all our citizens in our 11 provinces in the earthquake zone will have peaceful and safe homes,” he added. “There will not be a single earthquake victim who has not opened his workplace.”

The ceremony also inaugurated the second phase of a ring road project in Malatya, with construction on the remaining 15.3 kilometers of the road ongoing. Erdoğan assured residents of additional infrastructure projects to support the region’s recovery.

The twin earthquakes on Feb. 6, 2023, measuring magnitudes of 7.8 and 7.5, struck southern Türkiye and northern Syria. They killed more than 53,000 people in Türkiye and over 8,000 in Syria.

The quakes were the deadliest to hit the region in two decades. The initial 7.8 magnitude quake struck near Gaziantep in the early hours, followed by the second powerful tremor further north later that day.

The destruction spanned 11 Turkish provinces, including Adana, Hatay and Kahramanmaraş, and severely impacted Syrian regions such as Aleppo and Idlib.

In Türkiye, more than 35,000 buildings collapsed, and over 200,000 were heavily damaged.

The tremors have caused extensive destruction of Syrian cities and towns, massive internal and international displacement, compounding the challenges of a prolonged conflict and economic crisis.