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US Secretary of State Antony Blinken toured Turkey’s catastrophic quake damage Sunday as the devastated country’s rescue efforts turned to recovery missions in nearly all its provinces.
Blinken flew over some of the region’s hardest-hit areas with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu while pledging an additional $100 million in aid.
Duel quakes measuring magnitudes of 7.8 and 7.5 have killed more than 46,000 people in Turkey and part of Syria so far — with the death toll only set to rise. An untold number of people are still unaccounted in the ruins of hundreds of thousands of apartments.
“This is going to be a long-term effort,” Blinken told rescue workers at the joint US-Turkish Incirlik Air Base. “The search and rescue, unfortunately, is coming to an end. The recovery is on, and then there will be a massive rebuilding operation.”
Incirlik is serving as a key logistics base for the distribution of aid supplies from around the world. Supplies have been dispatched by both trucks and helicopters to remote areas that are hard to reach because of infrastructure damage.
The promised additional humanitarian aid comes after President Biden announced $85 million in relief when the quake struck. The new money will consist of $50 million in emergency refugee and migration funds and $50 million in humanitarian assistance, Blinken said.
The secretary’s trip marked his first visit to Turkey, a North Atlantic Treaty Organization ally, since taking office two years ago.
He toured the country’s southernmost Hatay Province in a helicopter with Cavusoglu before expected meetings with service personnel and military families.
The mayor of the province, Lutfu Savas, said Sunday that 21,000 people are confirmed dead so far in the region, accounting for more than half of the roughly 40,000 reported fatalities in Turkey.
