Today (February 6), Turkey marks the second anniversary of the devastating twin earthquakes that hit the country’s southeast on the morning of February 6th, 2023. At the earthquake’s epicenter in Kahramanmaraş, a ceremony was organized in the early hours of the morning to correspond with the exact time (4:17am) that the earthquake struck two years ago.

The ceremony took place at the city’s central clocktower and included the attendance of numerous politicians and public officials. In Adıyaman, another city affected by the quake, small businesses chose to remain closed in commemoration of the disaster.

Turkish Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya shared a message Wednesday evening saying that reconstruction efforts are ongoing in the earthquake-affected region:

“As President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan stated, ‘We will not rest until the earthquake-affected cities are completely back on their feet.’ We are united and stand tall in the face of difficulties.”

Just one month after the earthquakes in March 2023, President Erdoğan announced that “We will deliver 650,000 new housing units to citizens affected by the earthquake, 319,000 of which will be finished within the next year.’

Although thousands of earthquake survivors have been resettled in new government-built housing stock, reconstruction efforts continue to fall behind original targets from 2023. Two years after the tragedy, latest figures show that 201,431 new........

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