Save
It is now 10 days since a 7.5 magnitude earthquake rocked southeast Turkey and Syria. Hope of finding any survivors at this stage is all but gone. Now the real scale of the devastation and loss is becoming apparent and the Turkish people will need to take the first steps on the long road to rebuild their devastated country. Of course in order to do that, they need help says Fatih Tutak, chef-owner of two-Michelin star restaurant Turk, in Istanbul.
The call of chef Tutak
“Restaurants can help us,” says Tutak. “If they can put on a night in aid of the earthquake victims… if they could donate just one day’s income to the people of Turkey, you can’t imagine how much that would help and how grateful we would be. The people are desperate, they need help.”
Tutak has first-hand experience of the devastation having just returned from the area. The day after the earthquake, the chef made a snap decision to get in his car and drive towards danger.
Boxes of aid
“I didn’t realise how big it was from Istanbul,” says Tutak. ”I thought to myself, that I couldn’t stay here, I can’t do anything just watching from afar. I thought that people might need food.
“So I told my team to pack and we moved to the earthquake zone. It was a very quick decision.”
Help the victims of the earthquake by donating here
There was no emergency infrastructure in place for Tutak to link up with, just a chef in his car with some of his team, driving around, trying to see how they could help. Tutak put out the call on his Instagram page for help, looking for a kitchen they could use to cook.
“When I started to drive I didn’t know where I was going. I just started to send messages around saying that I was looking for a kitchen so I can cook and distribute food to people. I asked for help. Many people tried to find a place for me. A kitchen company called me and told me they had a mobile kitchen, a truck and that I could use it.”
Tutak and his team drove through the night, from Istanbul, so the scale of the disaster was hidden by the cover of darkness. Then, at 5am, as the sun started to rise, the first light lifted the curtains on a hellish scene.
“I saw fire and ambulances, people screaming, lights… many buildings flattened… It was an absolute disaster. It’s like suddenly waking up in a horror film. Suddenly the scene has changed. I told my team not to look around, because when you see things you just cry, all the time. I saw people dying, it’s terrible.”
The death toll from the horrific disaster is so far at 40,000, and creeping up daily. Tutak thinks that that number is only a fraction of the fatalities. From what he has seen, this is something much, much deadlier.
“One in every three buildings is gone, flattened. I mean it must be more than 100,000, even as high as 200,000, I don’t know the real number, but it’s not what they say, for sure.
“Imagine a horror movie that you have seen, and this is 10 times worse than that. It’s a big disaster man. It’s unimaginable the amount of deaths, I’ve never seen anything like it. We are hearing only 35 or 40,0000 people have lost their lives, in Iskanderun it might be 50,000 people. This is a huge disaster and they don’t show everything on TV. I think it’s way more than what we are hearing.”
Tutak eventually got the food truck and drove around Iskenderun, looking for a place to pitch up and cook. Once he did, he was able to secure food and supplies that were arriving from Istanbul and other parts of Turkey. Once up and running he was able to feed 12,000 people every day.
However, Tutak and his team couldn’t stay there forever. He has a business to run and people to cook for in Istanbul.
“We can’t do anything more so, we need to try and continue as normally as we can,” he says.
Latest
