Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency

Turkey's disaster agency is not only housing and assisting the country's nearly 3 million refugees but also actively working to help 40 disaster-stricken countries around the world, the president of the Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) has told daily Hürriyet upon receiving the 20th prestigious Ayd?n Do?an Award for its outstanding efforts in Turkey and abroad. 

The 20th Ayd?n Do?an Award has been granted to Turkey's Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) for its efforts in hosting and providing social services to over 2 million refugees fleeing the war in neighboring Syria. 

In a clear acknowledgment of the generations-long and multi-layered impact of the presence of millions of Syrian refugees in Turkey, the EU's executive arm has urged Ankara to concentrate its efforts on measures to help better integrate Syrians into Turkish society.

Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmu? categorically denied considering Syrian refugees in Turkey as part of "local population," calling the prospect "out of the question."

Only some 30 percent of Syrian migrant children in Turkey have access to education, the head of Turkey's Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) has announced, underlining the country's aim to enroll all school-age children by 2017. 

Three Syrian migrant children were killed and six others were injured after a fire broke out at a tent city in the Derik district of Turkey's southeastern Mardin province. The fire was the second reported in one week, after 21 tents burned down on March 25. 

Turkey's Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) has presented projects for the three billion euro fund the EU has agreed to provide for Syrian refugees, says AFAD's head, Fuat Oktay.

Around 92 percent of Turkey's mainland is on a seismic belt with 95 percent of its population living on it, said Fuat Oktay, head of the Prime Ministry Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD), in a written message published for the "1-7 March Week of Earthquake." 

A maternity and children's hospital in Somalia's capital built by a Turkish aid organization has opened.

Turkey's Helping Hands International Humanitarian Aid Association laid the foundation of the hospital in 2011 and today the hospital building was completed, Sadik Danisman, the president of the association, said on Feb. 25.        

Three people were killed on early Feb. 14 when a two-story house collapsed in a village in the southeastern province of Siirt.

The building, which housed 10 people from the same family, collapsed on early Feb. 14 for an unknown reason in Siirt's Ekmekçiler village.