After the devastating earthquake in Turkey and Syria, a wave of willingness to help has rolled out in Munich and the region. “People who want to donate get in touch every minute,” said Vural Ünlü, the chairman of the Turkish community, on Wednesday. He is pleased that there are also many Germans among them and the Greek community in Munich. Greek schools and parishes provide storage space. “In a catastrophe, people grow together, and political differences no longer play a role.”
The Turkish Consulate General in Munich has set up a hotline and is in the process of coordinating the logistics for transporting donations in kind to Turkey, says Consul General Süalp Erdoğan. The consulate is in contact with shipping companies and Turkish Airlines to use any free cargo space.
“It’s no use if people drive off individually now,” says Ünlü, “it only increases the chaos.” Private cars were stopped in Serbia on Tuesday because they did not have the necessary customs papers with them. Ünlü says his wife’s family lives in Kayseri. “It’s 300 kilometers from the epicenter, and the houses there still shook. Our relatives have been sleeping in the car for the third night in the freezing cold for fear of aftershocks.”
The Munich football club Türkgücü has also started an aid campaign. The municipality of Taufkirchen provided him with a large warehouse where donations in kind are collected. “The willingness to help is huge,” says Taskin Akkay, the club’s chairman. “We publish the times when you can make donations on our Instagram and Facebook channels so that we can have some control.”
Volunteers, especially from the club’s youth, pack the donations in boxes. Above all, warm clothing, blankets, baby food and diapers are needed. The families of several players lived in the earthquake area, “fortunately we haven’t received any death notices yet,” says Akkay. But the numbers are corrected upwards every day.
In the meantime, a four-person reconnaissance team from the aid organization Navis from Moosburg has arrived in Adana after a journey of almost 24 hours. They want to continue to Hatay this Thursday. “According to what the people here in Adana are telling us, almost everything there has been destroyed,” says Christian Pickal, who is part of the team, on the phone. Some roads are damaged and blocked and can only be passed with special vehicles. Another 15 to 20 volunteer Navis helpers want to fly to Turkey on Friday. By then it must be clear where the field hospital and the drinking water treatment systems can be used and how they will get there.
The Munich Airport Association collects money for donations in kind. In a bakery in Ceyhan in the province of Adana, 11,600 loaves of bread are baked on his behalf, and groceries such as lentils and oil as well as medical supplies are procured.
At the request of all factions in the city council, the city of Munich has set up a donation account with the Stadtsparkasse for the victims of the earthquake: IBAN DE86 7015 0000 0000 2030 00, BIC SSKMDEMM, purpose “earthquake aid”. In this way, the people of Munich can support humanitarian aid in the affected areas.