Officials also reported that they were sending an additional team of 40 firefighters to the region. Georgia sent a team of 60 rescue workers to Turkey and on February 8 the Interior Ministry reported that the Georgian rescuers had saved one person in the city of Adiyaman. Public sympathy also has run deep, with many ordinary citizens organizing private donations to Turkish charities and media and social media dominated by news of the earthquake and the rescue operations.Īs of February 8 the Azerbaijani rescue teams reported finding 16 people alive and 29 dead bodies under the rubble of collapsed buildings.Īzerbaijan did not report sending any aid to Syria, where the devastation also was widespread and magnified by the fact that it happened in an area that has already been ravaged by years of civil war. On February 8 the ministry said it was sending an additional team of 227 rescue workers to “our brotherly country,” a formulation that has been frequently used in Azerbaijani media. The following day Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Emergency Services sent two planeloads of aid, including a mobile field hospital and tents, bedding, and other aid to Turkey to help those displaced from their homes, and additional shipments of aid and medical teams have continued to be sent. President Ilham Aliyev called his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and “underlined that Azerbaijan and Turkey had always stood side by side,” according to a readout from Aliyev’s office. On February 6, the day the earthquake hit, Azerbaijan sent a team of 420 rescue workers and several rescue dogs to Turkey to assist in relief efforts. The response from Azerbaijan, which counts Turkey as its closest ally, was the quickest and most significant. But even in the face of such human tragedy, the aid efforts were deeply suffused with the region’s politics.
Rescue teams and humanitarian aid from around the Caucasus have been sent to Turkey and Syria to aid recovery efforts following a massive earthquake this week, the death toll of which has already topped 11,000. (photo: Ministry of Emergency Situations, Azerbaijan)
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