Turkey to build 650,000 houses for earthquake victims. This was announced on March 15 by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
“We promised to rebuild the destroyed cities within a year. We’ll be completing our damage assessment soon. Within one year, we plan to transfer 319,000 houses to legal residents, and in total we will build 650,000,” he told reporters.
The President added that the new buildings will have up to four floors and will be built in accordance with earthquake resistance requirements.
On the eve of Erdogan also said that the infrastructure of the southeastern regions of Turkey, affected by earthquakes, will be restored within a year. As the head of state noted, about 14 million people live in the regions affected by the cataclysms.
Earlier in the day, the head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Ramesh Rajasingham, said that the search and rescue operation after the earthquake in Turkey was the largest of all coordinated by the UN. He specified that 49 groups from dozens of countries were involved in the mission.
On March 12, Erdogan announced that the death toll from the February earthquakes in southeastern Turkey had reached 48,000. Another 115 thousand people were injured.
Earlier, on February 27, the Turkish leader said that it would be forbidden to build high-rise buildings on the site of the destroyed buildings. In addition, Turkey will not allow the construction of new homes in areas close to seismically active faults.
In early February, devastating earthquakes of magnitude 7.7 and 7.6 occurred in the Turkish province of Kahramanmarash in the southeast of the country near the Syrian border. After that, new earthquakes occurred in the region, but with a smaller magnitude.
