Revealed: Türkiye's Red Crescent sold tents to singer's charity

A tent city set up on a football pitch in Samandağ, Hatay. (Photo: AA)

Türkiye's Red Crescent sold tents to AHBAP, a popular charity group led by a singer, after the Maraş earthquakes, both parties have confirmed following a report late yesterday (February 25).

Murat Ağırel, a columnist for the daily Cumhuriyet, revealed the sale, alleging that the AHBAP had paid 46 million lira (2.4 million US dollars) to the Red Crescent for tents on the third day after the double earthquake on February 6.

The report also quoted an answer from the Red Crescent, which said the charity group had been charged the cost of the "raw materials" in order to continue tent manufacturing.

In separate statements today, Haluk Levent, head of the AHBAP, and Kerem Kınık, head of the Red Crescent, admitted the sale.

The AHBAP said on Twitter that it had contacted all tent manufacturers across the country following the quakes, including a Red Crescent enterprise for tent manufacturing.

While the other manufacturers did not have enough tents to fulfill the need for tents in the 10 cities affected by the quakes, the Red Crescent had 2,050 tents, it said. "We immediately made a contract for the 2,050 tents and delivered them to the earthquake zone the next morning."

Levent also defended the action on Twitter, saying, "We didn't have the luxury [to think about] whether we should buy these tents or not."

"Every transaction we made was legal and right," he added.

Kınık also tweeted that they had sold 2,050 tents to the charity group, charging the costs of the tents.

The agency had also delivered over 54,000 tents to the Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency (AFAD), and manufactures about 1,000 tents every day, he added.

Currently, some 1.3 million people in the region are staying in tent cities, according to Kınık.

Parliamentary question

Burhanettin Bulut, an MP with the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), brought the issue to the parliamentary agenda, submitting a question to the interior minister.

"... the fact that the Red Crescent sells tents instead of distributing them for free while people are left outside in freezing cold shows that the institution has moved away from its primary duty and become a business," Bulut said in his parliamentary question.

The MP asked Minister Süleyman Soylu to disclose the number of tents in the Red Crescent's inventory, how many tents it had delivered to be used in the quake-hit regions, and how much money it had charged the organizations that it had sold tents.

The earthquakes

On February 6, two earthquakes with a magnitude of 7.7 and 7.6 struck the southern city of Maraş.

The quakes affected 11 cities in Türkiye's south and southeast, as well as Syria's northern parts.

The official death toll from the quakes stands at over 44,000 and is expected to increase further, as over 160,000 buildings were destroyed or severely damaged, according to government figures.

Nearly two million people have been displaced due to the earthquakes. (VK)