Volunteers at Turkish Embassy in US help send supplies to quake-hit Türkiye

By Servet Gunerigok

WASHINGTON (AA) - More than 100 volunteers gathered Saturday at the Turkish Embassy in Washington, DC to help send humanitarian supplies to earthquake-hit Türkiye.

The diplomatic mission announced it would accept donations including blankets, bed chairs, floor mats, heaters, among other items -- hours after two powerful earthquakes hit southern Türkiye on Monday.

To date, all diplomatic missions across the US have shipped more than 200 tons of humanitarian assistance to Türkiye.

Since Monday, members of the Turkish American community as well as American citizens have been dropping off donations in bags and boxes to help victims thousands of miles away.

Donations arrived all day in bags and boxes and in most cases they were overflowing.

Afterward, volunteers including students and embassy employees would begin the meticulous work of sorting and boxing the items which were classified into categories.

The day-long effort is to send the materials to an airport in Virginia and ship them to Türkiye via Turkish Airlines.

Abdoullah Mohamed Abdoullah is a Sudanese national who volunteered to work the entire day to finish up collecting, sorting and shipping the items.

"I came here to help families and the people of my fellow Muslims. It is a human-to-human thing to help each other in natural disasters like this," Abdoullah told Anadolu.

He said the efforts of volunteers encouraged him to come to the embassy and help out in the wake of the "very devastating" and "very sad" earthquakes.

Efecan Karakaya, a student in DC, has been coming to the embassy for days and expressed sadness for being away from his home country while it is going through hard times.

"We are doing our best to extend a helping hand here," said Karakaya.

Asked if he gets tired working five to six hours every day to work on donations, Karakaya said: "No, we have no time to get tired when we think about the situation" in Türkiye.

Another student, Burak Zulfikar, 18, said he comes to help as much as time permits and noted that every volunteer is doing their part to contribute to relief efforts.

Nearly 25,000 people were killed in the earthquakes that jolted southern Türkiye, as of early late Saturday. More than 80,000 others were injured.

The relief efforts at the diplomatic mission will continue during the upcoming week.