Tent Cities In Quake-Hit Southern Türkiye Become Pet Sanctuary

Tent cities in Türkiye's quake-hit Hatay province have become pet sanctuaries.

A tent city was established by the Turkish disaster agency AFAD in the Millet Park (National Park) in the Iskenderun district.

Several quake victims, whose houses were destroyed or damaged, stay there with the pets that they rescued.

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

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."

Now, they live together in the tent.

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."

Demirkandan said that her bird is like her child.

"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 Feb. 6. The earthquakes, which were centered in the province of Kahramanmaras, affected more than 13 million people across 11 provinces, including Hatay, Adana, Gaziantep, Diyarbakir, Adiyaman, Malatya, Kilis, Osmaniye, Elazig, and Sanliurfa.

*Writing by Gozde Bayar -