Turk living in Portage seeks community help for homeland

We continue to see the aftermath of the 7.8- magnitude earthquake that shook Syria and Turkey in the middle of the night on February 6th. This is not only impacting people in those regions, but locally as well.

The death toll from the event is already at over 42,000 and will only keep climbing.

Ilgin Irmak, who now lives in Portage la Prairie but is originally from Turkey, says she's been in contact with her family, and they're all thankfully okay.

Ilgin Irmak 

Irmak notes that the Turkish government has sent out a request to its international representatives, embassies and consulates trying to get blankets, sleeping bags and tents due to a manufacturing shortage.

"Those are the items that are actually most needed right now," she states.

Irmak will be collecting those items on behalf of the Toronto Turkish Consulate General until February 24th. 

"I'm really trying my best to kind of push for my workplace and the community as much as we can to get some things in."

Donations from Portagers can be dropped off at both KF Aerospace in Southport and at Portage's City Hall before next Friday.

Irmak, who immigrated to Canada at five years old, relates this tragic news to the 1999 earthquakes she experienced in Turkey.

"Thankfully, we were all okay. No one from my immediate family was hurt. But it was traumatizing, and we didn't have the amount of communication obviously that we have now with cell phones and the Internet. That scarred a whole generation of people. That's what that region is going to go through now. It's really going to define them whether they're older or younger. This is going to be a devastating loss for that community."

She explains that in 1999, her family had to flee to the hills due to rumours that a local industrial plant would explode.

"They were afraid that this treatment plant would blow up, and they didn't know if there would be more aftershocks."

When things calmed down, Irmak and her family, with no home left to go back to, were forced to live in military-style tents where they could wash their clothing, shower, go to the bathroom and gather as a community.

"I ended up staying in that tent community for about a little over ten months," she continues. "As a child, I don't remember anything bad about it. I was naive. I was happy, and thankfully no one I knew actually passed. But my parents had people they knew who passed."

Irmak says these latest earthquakes are more devastating than the ones she experienced and will affect the country for a very long time.

"A lot of these buildings in that region were older, and they didn't have codes back then to think about earthquake safety." she continues."There are a lot of children, unfortunately, left without families. We have to think about possible orphanages and schools. There's just so much to rebuild."

Irmak, who originally moved to Ottawa when she first arrived in Canada, has been working out of Southport with her husband for the last couple of years.

"I want to thank everyone for their concern and their willingness to help out. It's such a huge thing to see a community come together. I've seen firsthand how Portage treats its people and its newcomers, and I am genuinely optimistic about this."

The federal government announced last week that they would be matching donations to the Red Cross from Canadians up to $10 million for relief efforts in Turkey and Syria following the earthquakes.