Turkey: Foreign students volunteer to aid quake victims

By Tezcan Ekizler and Haydar Toprakci

IZMIR, Turkey (AA) - Foreign students in Turkey volunteered for the Turkish Red Crescent to help the victims of a powerful earthquake shaking the country’s Aegean region last month.

On Oct. 30, a magnitude 6.6 tremor rattled Turkey’s third largest city of Izmir which killed at least 115 and injured over 1,000 people.

The Turkish Red Crescent works on the ground with some 9,000 volunteers and 300 employees, including foreign students who came to Turkey to attend university.

Students from Azerbaijan, Somalia, Yemen, Syria, Egypt, and Afghanistan have been working to alleviate the suffering of the quake victims in Izmir since the first day of the disaster.

Suleyman Aliyev, an Azerbaijani student who lives in Turkey for two years, said they decided with his friends to become volunteers for the Turkish Red Crescent after the quake.

“People are very depressed. I try to make them laugh by supporting them voluntarily,” said Aliyev, who works at the aid depot.

Fatima Abdi from Somalia was among the volunteers. “I worked in the aid depot, served in the soup kitchen. It is very nice to help people. Pain dies down when shared. The Turkish Red Crescent is doing very successful work in this regard.”

Fatun Ali, another Somalian student, said that he knew the Turkish Red Crescent from the works that it carried out in his country.

“As soon as I learned the earthquake, I came voluntarily to the city,” Ali said, wishing that people in Izmir would heal their wounds soon.​​​​​​​

*Writing by Gozde Bayar in Ankara