Tent cities in quake-hit southern Turkiye become pet sanctuaries

Tent cities in Turkiye’s quake-hit Hatay province have become pet sanctuaries.

Tents were set up by the Turkish disaster agency AFAD in the Millet Park in the Iskenderun district following the devastating earthquakes on 6 February.

Several quake victims whose houses were destroyed or damaged are currently housed there with the pets they rescued.

Emra Guzel, who lives in the tent city, said she adopted her dog seven years ago.

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When the tremors started, she said her dog Mega got very scared.

Guzel said: “We found her by the bedside. There was great damage inside the house. After the earthquake stopped, my daughters started looking for her at home with a light. My daughters did not leave home without the dog.

”For Dudu Gok, the shrieking of her two parrots was a sign that something bad was about to happen.

“I woke up to the noise of the birds…Our house is officially going up and down. The first thing was to get our birds out and my husband took them out right away. We’ve been living here in a tent with the birds since the earthquake,” she said.

Fatma Demirkandan said that she stays in the tent city with her bird Lemon, adding that Lemon is like a child to her.

“At that moment, I was in shock, I was screaming. I grabbed the bird with its cage and went out… the cage of the bird fell from my hand, and it was shattered. An hour later, I found the bird with its feathers cut off in the corner of the piles,” she added.

More than 45,000 people died in Türkiye in the magnitude 7.7 and 7.6 earthquakes on 6 February. MOre than 13 million people have been affected across 11 provinces, including Hatay, Adana, Gaziantep, Diyarbakir, Adiyaman, Malatya, Kilis, Osmaniye, Elazig and Sanliurfa.

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