Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) requested help from the Turkish military 35 hours and 56 minutes after a 7.8 magnitude earthquake rocked the south of the country on 6 February.
The AFAD sent a message to the Turkish Armed Forces on 7 February at 4.13 p.m. local time asking for search and rescue teams, journalist İsmail Saymaz wrote on Monday.
The military directed the message to its land, air and naval forces, and the air forces command waited for an additional 5 hours and 22 minutes to inform its subdivisions, increasing the delay in disaster response to 41 hours.
In fact, the Turkish military personnel only managed to reach the earthquake-hit regions on the third day following the earthquake, Saymaz said, sharing transcripts of documents and messages as evidence of the delay.
İsmail Çataklı, the Deputy Minister of Interior, accused Saymaz of defamation and shared an audio recording to refute Saymaz’s claims.
According to Çataklı, the audio recording proves that the Turkish military was called for help only a few minutes after the tremor. However, the 48-second audio recording only contains an AFAD executive asking the air force to provide aircraft needed to carry the authority’s personnel from other places in Turkey to the disaster area.
Saymaz immediately responded to Çataklı, saying that the audio recording does not contain any official request for search and rescue personnel from the Turkish Armed Forces.
As evidence of his claims, the journalist now shared covert shots of the official documents showing the exact date and time the official requests were sent to the military.
