Turkey

13 Feb 2023; MEMO: A Turkish aid team managed to reach earthquake victims in southern Türkiye by following a dog when they got lost.

After setting out for a village in Goksun district of Kahramanmaras province, the team chose an alternate route as the road was closed due to snow and rocks. After a while, they lost their way and decided to follow a dog that approached them. Thanks to the guidance of the dog, they found the village and delivered the aid.

12 Feb 2023; MEMO: Turkish police have detained 12 people deemed responsible for the collapse of buildings in Turkiye's south-eastern provinces affected by this week's earthquake, as authorities launch a series of investigations over a leading cause of the structures' instability.

12 Feb 2023; MEMO: A border gate between long-feuding Turkey and Armenia has been opened for the first time in 35 years to allow aid for victims of the devastating earthquakes in southern Turkey, state-owned Anadolu news agency and a diplomat said.

Turkey's special envoy for Armenia, Serdar Kilic, tweeted photos of trucks passing through the Alican checkpoint at the Turkish side of the Aras river separating the two countries.

ADIYAMAN, Turkey (AP) — Thousands who survived the earthquakes that struck Turkey and Syria a week ago are pondering what comes next. While many have been evacuated from the devastated region, others are staying by wrecked homes and as the search for missing loved ones continues.

Rescuers found a woman alive 174 hours after the first quake struck, but reports of rescues were coming less often as the time since the quake reaches the limits of the human body’s ability to survive without water, especially in freezing temperatures.

12 Feb 2023; MEMO: Palestinian artist, Abrar Sabbah, who received appreciation for her drawing against the provocative cartoon of the French Charlie Hebdo magazine mocking the earthquake disaster in Turkiye, stated she wanted to convey a message of support for Turkiye.

French magazine, Charlie Hebdo, has sparked outrage with a cartoon it published mocking Turkiye after two deadly earthquakes hit the country on Monday.

ANTAKYA, Turkey (AP) — When war broke out in Ukraine, Aydin Sisman’s relatives there fled to the ancient city of Antakya, in a southeastern corner of Turkey that borders Syria.

They may have escaped one disaster, but another found them in their new home.

They were staying with Sisman’s Ukrainian mother-in-law when their building collapsed last Monday as a 7.8 magnitude earthquake leveled much of Antakya and ravaged the region in what some in Turkey are calling the disaster of the century.

ANTAKYA, Turkey (AP) — Turkish justice officials targeted more than 130 people allegedly involved in shoddy and illegal construction methods as rescuers extricated more survivors, including a pregnant woman and two small children, six days after a pair of earthquakes collapsed thousands of buildings.

The death toll from the 7.8 magnitude and 7.5 magnitude quakes that hit southeastern Turkey and northern Syria nine hours apart on Feb. 6 rose to 33,179 on Sunday and was certain to keep increasing as search teams locate more bodies in the rubble.

ISTANBUL, Feb 11 (Reuters) - Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday the government would take action against those involved in looting and other crimes in the region hit by this week's devastating earthquakesas the issue of security there came into focus.

"We've declared a state of emergency," he said during a visit to the disaster zone. "It means that, from now on, the people who are involved in looting or kidnapping should know that the state's firm hand is on their backs," he said.

KIRIKHAN, Turkey, Feb 11 (Reuters) - A woman died in hospital on Saturday a day after she was pulled out of the rubble of a collapsed building in southern Turkey, where she had been trapped for 104 hours since Monday's devastating earthquake, rescuers said.

German rescuers pulled 40-year-old Zeynep Kahraman out of the rubble in the town of Kirikhan in southern Turkey on Friday. They hailed her survival a "miracle" as search and rescue efforts in the aftermath of the region's deadliest quake in decades kept turning up more bodies.

ANTAKYA, Turkey/JANDARIS, Syria, Feb 11 (Reuters) - Rescuers in Turkey pulled more people from the rubble early on Saturday, five days after the country's most devastating earthquake since 1939, but hopes were fading in Turkey and Syria that many more survivors would be found.

In Kahramanmaras, close to the quake's epicentre in southern Turkey, there were fewer visible rescue operations amid the smashed concrete mounds of fallen houses and apartment blocks, while ever more trucks rumbled through the streets shipping out debris.