Over one million meals served one week after deadly Türkiye-Syria earthquakes
As families slept in the early hours of February 6, a powerful 7.8-magnitude earthquake shook communities across Türkiye and Syria. Just six hours later, another massive, 7.5-magnitude quake rocked the same region. The two intense earthquakes and continual aftershocks leveled cities, killing more than 40,000 people and leaving tens of thousands more injured and at least one million people displaced.
José and the WCK Relief Team were on the ground shortly after the earthquakes. Arriving in Adana, our team quickly identified restaurant partners able to start cooking immediately, while at the same time beginning to set up a WCK Relief Kitchen. Initially providing meals for five shelters in Adana, we are now supporting more than 60 shelters that have opened for families evacuated from across the region.
At the same time, it became clear to our scouting teams throughout the region that the scale of need is immense. The earthquake impacted several major cities and many smaller communities, many of which can be hours away from other population centers. Damage is evident all throughout central and southern Türkiye and northern Syria.
To ensure we could get meals to families in impacted areas, we established regional teams capable of reaching communities and meeting their unique needs. Since then, we have partnered with more than 25 restaurants across impacted provinces to provide more than 900,000 meals in the country.
The ongoing conflict in Syria makes it complex for WCK teams to operate at the speed and scale we usually do. Still, we were able to reach hard-hit towns in the country by Sunday.
In partnership with IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation and Gift of the Givers—who we worked with in South Africa—we have delivered more than 30,000 meals, most of which were prepared by local restaurants. With WCK support, Gift of the Givers is scaling its operations from a couple hundred meals a day to 3,000. These meals are prepared in Türkiye and are delivered to a hospital in Syria.
Meals have been delivered to families and first responders in the towns of A’zaz, Afrin, and Jindires and our team is working with local partners to continue increasing the number of meals we deliver each day. In order to scale operations, IHH is establishing a kitchen just across the border in Türkiye from which food will be distributed to communities in Syria. Additionally, alongside IHH, we are distributing food kits at refugee camps. Kits include bulk dry goods for families able to cook for themselves.
The earthquakes have exacerbated a humanitarian crisis in Syria shaped by years of conflict. Despite the severity of the situation, people are stepping up to support their neighbors as best they can—families are offering space in already cramped tents and makeshift shelters for people now displaced by the earthquakes.
Our response has scaled quickly by working hand-in-hand with local restaurants and organizations. Just over one week since first reaching devastated communities, we are providing more than 200,000 meals a day across Türkiye and Syria.
While supporting the work of local partners, we have also opened WCK Relief Kitchens in several provinces. One of these is located in Osmaniye, where one of our food distribution partners has offered a warehouse with a cafeteria which we have transformed into a Relief Kitchen. Another two similar facilities are available If increased need is identified.
By Friday, the WCK Relief Team was already working with a partner kitchen in Elbistan established by a group of local chefs eager to start cooking for families in the hard-hit city. In addition to this partner kitchen, we have begun operation of a WCK Relief Kitchen in Elbistan and another in nearby Nurhak.
The expertise of partner nonprofit organizations has been crucial to quickly scaling our operations. We have once again partnered with Instant Aid, an organization we have worked with in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Ukraine. Instant Aid is helping get thousands of meals to families in Kahramanmaraş where we are also working to prepare food kits including lentils, rice, and flour for families in the city.
Search and rescue crews in Türkiye and Syria continue working around the clock, even in freezing temperatures and snow.
When our team reached the southern Turkish city of Antakya late at night, we found first responders working nonstop, despite going long stretches without food. Crews were able to take a short break huddled around fires while they ate WCK-provided sandwiches. Entire sections of Antakya—a city tracing its roots back to the fourth century BC—were destroyed and evacuation orders set in place for residents.
Evacuation orders in Antakya show this is still a rapidly evolving situation. WCK’s Relief Team was in the final stages of establishing a kitchen in the city when orders to leave due to safety concerns came in. While we continue to support people in Antakya (mainly first responders) we are deploying food trucks to communities where families are likely to head as they evacuate.
Antakya is the capital of Hatay Province, one of the hardest-hit parts of the country. Also in this province is the city of İskenderun where we are supporting families waiting to evacuate. To meet the food needs of families sheltering in the city, we have partnered with local restaurants and have been distributing food to people staying in tents.
In impacted towns and cities in both countries, we are seeing a large number of families deciding to stay near their homes instead of seeking shelter in neighboring cities—sometimes hours away. Because of this, we are ensuring distribution efforts meet people where they are. This was the case in Barış—a town in the mountainous center of Türkiey—where we provided hundreds of hot, fresh meals along with sandwiches and fruit to families now living in a camp after being displaced by the earthquakes.
As our scouting teams reached devastated communities they witnessed rescue workers—many of them volunteers—regularly stop and ask for silence as they tried to detect signs of life among the rubble. It was common for first responders to request total silence before calling out “Is there anybody in here?”. Then, silence would set in as everyone on the scene waited for any response from survivors.
A similar scene played out in Elbistan, a city in central Turkey near the epicenter of the major earthquakes. There, four friends were walking among the rubble when they heard a faint voice. Search and rescue teams had left, having already combed through the area. The friends jumped into a car and drove off to find help, eventually convincing rescue workers to return to the scene. Upon arrival, first responders were able to rescue a 23-year-old woman as night was setting in and the temperature was dipping.
Search and rescue crews have arrived from around the world to support local authorities overwhelmed by the scale of the disaster. One such crew drove more than 3,000 miles from Ukraine to the province of Hatay where on Tuesday they rescued a woman who had been trapped in the rubble for more than one week.
As the region continues to try to move ahead from the earthquakes, the WCK team is expecting a shift in food needs. We are anticipating that families who have been camping outside damaged and destroyed buildings, waiting for news on loved ones, will soon move to shelters or other forms of temporary housing. WCK teams across Türkiye and our partners in Syria are ready to continue supporting people impacted by the disaster, providing a nourishing plate of food wherever they may be.
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