In the first month since since the earthquakes and countless aftershocks hit Türkiye and Syria, WCK teams worked shoulder-to-shoulder with local partners to provide more than 12 million nourishing meals to people in both countries. Now that WCK kitchens and our partners in Türkiye and Syria have established operations, we will begin to hand over much of the leadership of our response to local team members who have the expertise to ensure WCK is meeting the needs of impacted families. 

12+ million meals served to communities in Türkiye and Syria

The earthquakes were the worst to strike Türkiye and Syria in more than a century. Ten days after first reaching the region, WCK’s Relief Team had served more than one million meals.

The first 10 days

A crew of Ukranian rescue workers drove more than 3,000 miles from Ukraine to hard-hit Hatay Province where they supported families impacted by the earthquakes.

Ukraine in Türkiye

A local team in Gaziantep began cooking immediately after the earthquakes. WCK then helped build a large kitchen to scale up production—and they are now able to provide hot meals for 20,000 people a day.

Gaziantep

Delicious fruit—served alongside sandwiches or hot meals—is a critical part of WCK response efforts. In Türkiye, our Relief Team is sourcing oranges from a farm in Kozan, allowing us to support the local economy while providing the freshest fruit possible!

Kozan

As we always do, WCK is working with local chefs to provide culturally appropriate foods that can offer the most comfort. Hülya is one of the local chefs cooking in our Antakya kitchen. Alongside her children and husband, she managed to evacuate her building just moments before it collapsed. Unfortunately, several of her family members were not able to leave quickly enough and were buried in the rubble. Now, she is preparing meals for neighbors who also lost loved ones and their homes.

#ChefsForTürkiye

Hülya

Many people in heavily impacted regions of Syria did not have the option to leave their devastated communities. This was the case for two-year-old Nur and her family in Jinderes. The family of six relies on humanitarian aid after their home was destroyed. Because of this, we have continued to expand partnerships with local restaurants to ensure that our teams are able to increase production near hard-hit areas.

#ChefsForSyria

Ramazan is one of the local chefs who joined our Gaziantep kitchen. A chef with half a century of experience, Ramazan had set up his own soup distribution site just hours after the major earthquakes. Now, he brings his decades of experience and local expertise to WCK’s Relief Kitchen where he is an integral part of the team that is producing delicious local favorites like Ezogelin soup, bulgur, and chicken sote. 

Ramazan

Stories from the ground

First arriving in Adana, our team quickly identified restaurant partners able to start cooking immediately and began to establish our first WCK Relief Kitchen. To ensure we can get meals to families in impacted areas as effectively as possible, we created regional teams capable of reaching communities and meeting their unique needs. While supporting the work of local partners, additional WCK Relief Kitchens have opened in several provinces in Türkiye, including Osmaniye, Gaziantep, Hatay, Adiyman, and Kahramanmaraş.

In partnership with IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation and Gift of the Givers—who we worked with in South Africa after devastating floods in 2022—we are providing thousands of daily meals prepared by our partners and local restaurants. Fresh plates of food and food kits are delivered to families and first responders in the towns like A’zaz, Afrin, and Jindires and our team is working to increase capacity.

Latest from the ground

Communities throughout Türkiye and Syria were rocked by two powerful earthquakes on February 6. The first—a 7.8-magnitude temblor—occurred in the early hours of the day as many people were still asleep. This quake was felt as far away as Israel and Lebanon. The second was a 7.5-magnitude quake that shook the region just six hours later.

The full scale of damage is unknown but thousands of buildings were destroyed across more than a dozen cities, killing more than 40,000 people and displacing more than one million people. Search and rescue crews in Türkiye and Syria continue working around the clock, even in freezing temperatures and snow. 

WCK’s Relief Team reached communities near the epicenter in Türkiye two days after the disaster, the earliest it was safe to do so. Working with local partners, we are supporting families impacted by the crisis and authorities stretched thin due to the scale of the disaster. Despite the complexities of crossing the Syrian border, our Relief Team reached communities in the country just days after the earthquakes. Since then, we have scaled quickly and are distributing more than 400,000 daily meals in impacted communities throughout both countries. 

On February 6, a pair of powerful earthquakes devastated more than a dozen cities throughout central and southern Türkiye and northern Syria. WCK's Relief Team is distributing meals for survivors and first responders while working to scale up as quickly as possible.