The President of the Republic of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, on Saturday handed over the keys to the owners of the renovated houses that were destroyed in the devastating earthquakes and rebuilt in just 60 days, Anadolia reports.
Together with Devlet Baceli, the president of the coalition National Movement Party (MHP), Erodgan stayed in the Turkish city of Gaziantep, where the keys to the renovated housing units were handed over in the villages affected by the earthquake.
“We will continue to work without letting anyone stop us until we make all the settlements of our country disaster-proof,” Erdogan said.
He reminded that today is exactly 75 days since the devastating earthquakes and that they visited all the areas affected by the earthquake.
He said that in 45 days they had already completed 10 rural houses, the keys of which were handed over to their owners 60 days after the foundation stone was laid.
“I want these country houses, which are really beautiful works with their architecture, construction and all other characteristics, to be useful to the hosts,” underlined Erdogan.
He added that the process of building more than 105,000 housing units in the earthquake-affected areas is underway.
“So far, we have started the process of building more than 105,000 housing units (in the affected area). We have laid the foundations for almost half of them,” the Turkish president said.
Erdogan also talked about plans for the future in the context of earthquake protection and when it comes to Istanbul.
“Recently, we shared with our nation the good news about the new urban transformation campaign in Istanbul. To our brothers and sisters from Istanbul, who live in risky buildings, we presented an offer in which half of the conversion cost will be covered by us as a state, and the other half is very favorable , conditional borrowing. Our goal is not to leave a single risky building in Istanbul in five years by transforming about 300,000 housing units per year with a study to be carried out,” Erdogan said.
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