Communities throughout Türkiye and Syria were rocked by two powerful earthquakes on February 6. The first—a 7.8-magnitude temblor—occurred in the early hours of the day as many people were still asleep. This quake was felt as far away as Israel and Lebanon. The second was a 7.5-magnitude quake that shook the region just six hours later.
First arriving in Adana, our team quickly identified restaurant partners able to start cooking immediately and began to establish our first WCK Relief Kitchen. To ensure we could get meals to families in impacted areas as effectively as possible, we created regional teams capable of reaching communities and meeting their unique needs. While supporting the work of local partners, additional WCK Relief Kitchens opened in several provinces in Türkiye, including Osmaniye, Gaziantep, Hatay, Adiyman, and Kahramanmaraş.
In partnership with IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation and Gift of the Givers—who we worked with in South Africa after devastating floods in 2022—we are provided thousands of daily meals prepared by our partners and local restaurants. Fresh plates of food and food kits were delivered to families and first responders in the towns like A’zaz, Afrin, and Jindires.
WCK teams in Türkiye and Syria combined to provide more than 20 million meals to people impacted by the disaster.
By the numbers
meals provided
Restaurant Partners
WCK Kitchens
cities in Türkiye
supported
cities in Syria
supported
Chefs For The World
Coming together for Ramadan
To best serve families over Ramadan—a month of fasting, prayer, reflection, and community observed by Muslims worldwide—our kitchens adapted their menus to continue providing culturally appropriate meals. Teams prepared sahur and iftar meals. Sahur is a meal eaten before sunrise, when fasting begins, that sustains observers until iftar, the meal eaten after sunset when they break their fast. Our teams worked to provide a sense of normalcy and community in a region renowned for its hospitality.
Chefs For Syria
How WCK supported Syrian families
WCK’s Relief Team first delivered meals to communities in Syria within days of the February 6 earthquakes that rocked the region. Our team faced a series of challenges new to WCK, none bigger than this being our first response to a natural disaster in a conflict zone. In order to scale operations in the country, we partnered with local restaurants and organizations and have since served millions of nourishing meals to families impacted by the disaster.
Videos from the ground
Watch these videos to learn more about our response to the earthquakes in Türkiye and Syria.
The first 10 days
The earthquakes were the worst to strike Türkiye and Syria in more than a century. Ten days after first reaching the region, WCK’s Relief Team had served more than one million meals.
Ukraine in Türkiye
A crew of Ukranian rescue workers drove more than 3,000 miles from Ukraine to hard-hit Hatay Province where they supported families impacted by the earthquakes.
Meet Ilhami
Our work would not have been possible without volunteers from the local community, many of them earthquake survivors themselves. Meet Ilhami from Adıyaman. He initially joined the WCK team as a volunteer, eventually becoming an invaluable member of the team as a contract employee.
Hülya
Hülya
As we always do, WCK worked with local chefs to provide culturally appropriate foods that can offer the most comfort. Hülya was one of the local chefs cooking in our Antakya kitchen. Alongside her children and husband, she managed to evacuate her building just moments before it collapsed. Unfortunately, several of her family members were not able to leave quickly enough and were buried in the rubble. She prepared meals for neighbors who also lost loved ones and their homes.
Nur
Nur
Many people in heavily impacted regions of Syria did not have the option to leave their devastated communities. This was the case for two-year-old Nur and her family in Jinderes. The family of six relies on humanitarian aid after their home was destroyed. Because of this, we expanded partnerships with local restaurants to ensure that our teams were able to increase production near hard-hit areas.
Ramazan
Ramazan
Ramazan was one of the local chefs who joined our Gaziantep kitchen. A chef with half a century of experience, Ramazan had set up his own soup distribution site just hours after the major earthquakes. He brought his decades of experience and local expertise to WCK’s Relief Kitchen where he became an integral part of the team that produced delicious local favorites like Ezogelin soup, bulgur, and chicken sote.
