Due to poverty and devastating disaster, survivors of the earthquake in Turkey are digging through the rubble in search of gold
Economic crises have hit Turkey’s desperately poor people with a devastating earthquake that has eaten green and dry, leaving millions homeless on the streets.
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International aid must start flowing to Turkey and Syria to save survivors from the rubble – Details
With the Turkish election looming, Erdogan and the Turkish opposition are busy with the election struggle, forgetting Turkey’s poor.
High inflation rate
Last year, Turkey saw inflation rise to more than 85% in October, its highest level in nearly 25 years, and the cost of transport and food has jumped dramatically as the country’s central bank continues its policy of lowering interest rates, despite high inflation.
This is what caused earthquake victims to search the rubble for gold and other belongings. Stories of digging in the rubble were monitored by international newspapers, where many of the survivors, suffering after losing almost everything in the earthquake, families left their savings and gold in the houses, which made the poor dig in the rubble.
“Everything we have is under the rubble.. She and her husband came to the site every day to see if they could find their valuables. “I know where the gold is, so when the drilling equipment comes, I’ll ask her to stop for a moment to see if I can get it out,” she said.
The Secret of Acquiring Gold
Turkey’s population is also resorting to gold to hedge against rising inflation and the sharp depreciation of the Turkish lira in past years.
One Turk said in press statements: None of the citizens trust the state. They trust gold, and therefore it is present in the rubble in abundance.
Turkish media reported that during the work of removing the debris in the city of Kahramanmaraş, a digger found a bag filled with gold belts, the weight of the gold belts in the bag reached about 78 kilograms, and it was said that they belonged to the heirs of Ibrahim Zbone, a famous goldsmith in Kahramanmaraş, according to the Haberler Website. For its part, the family of a client denied in an official statement via its Instagram account what was said about the ownership of the famous jeweler and his children, explaining that Akef Zbon did not die in the earthquake as was reported in some news sites, as he was not a resident of the circulating address, and the bag he found did not belong to him.
Turkish police received the bag full of gold, and a search is underway for its owner to verify his ownership. If the owner or his heirs do not appear, the gold belts will be transferred to the Turkish state treasury after five years.
“A Turkish staff member who volunteered to participate in search and rescue operations found a bag with $4 million in the rubble, and volunteer Mehmet Ozer Öslu, a municipal worker from Konya State, found the bag while participating in rescue operations in Hatay and handed it to the police.”
“In another incident, firefighters involved in search and rescue teams in Gaziantep found $2 million in rubble.”