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Turkey to provide support needed to Croatia in post-earthquake revival

Turkey to provide support needed to Croatia in post-earthquake revival

Ankara is ready to provide any support needed to Croatia in the post-earthquake revival of the damaged provinces, Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said Friday.

Speaking at a joint press conference with his Croatian counterpart Gordan Grlic Radman and the deputy prime minister of Croatia, Tomo Medved, Çavuşoğlu expressed that as a country that has suffered from earthquakes for decades, Turkey is willing to share its experience in dealing with the disaster.

Çavuşoğlu visited the Croatian city of Petrinja, which suffered major damage in a 6.3 magnitude earthquake in December 2020. The foreign minister’s visit took place two days after yet another earthquake with a magnitude of 4.1 hit the region.

“The Croatian ministers are working quite hard and nonstop to reconstruct the ruined buildings and restore the damaged ones. We acknowledge this as Turkey and appreciate it,” he continued.

Underlining that Turkey has learned crucial lessons from its experiences with earthquakes, Çavuşoğlu said that states should be ready for any type of disaster at any time.

Turkey has suffered devastating earthquakes in the past, including a 7.4 magnitude earthquake in Gölcük in 1999. It killed more than 17,000 people in the greater region. The country is among the world’s most seismically active zones as it is situated on several active fault lines, with the most potentially devastating being the Northern Anatolia Fault (NAF), the meeting point of the Anatolian and Eurasian tectonic plates.

The Environment and Urban Planning Ministry already has in place an ambitious, nationwide project to improve the building and safety standards for 689,658 houses, shops and offices.

Over the last eight years, the ministry has evacuated or demolished 673,000 of those units, while work on the remaining structures continues.