Yesterday, turned down help from Israel --- even tho, in their last earthquake, with over 20,000 dead, Israel was there, first, to help.... Folks complaining about the gov turning down international help... It's the Kurds, ya' know. Temps at night below zero....To be fair, they turned down help from everyone else, too.
Let's not be fair. Governments are supposed to provide for their citizens, and part of that is accepting help when you're overwhelmed. Erdogan's refusal of offered help demonstrates a fundamental lack of respect for his people. That's something that the people would note in a democracy...
Officials said 12,000 more tents would be delivered to the cities of Ercis and Van and also to nearby villages.
Ankara has been criticised for failing to help some of the most needy who spent the second night in freezing conditions without heating and tents.
At least 279 people are now known to have died and some 1,300 were injured after the 7.2-magnitude earthquake.
Rescue teams with sniffer dogs continued through the night to search for survivors under the rubble of hundreds of collapsed buildings.
Cranes and other heavy equipment have been lifting slabs of concrete, and many residents have been joining in the rescue effort, digging with shovels.
But hopes to find more survivors are fading now, with the officials warning that the death toll is expected to rise further.
'We're freezing'
Tented encampments have grown up in Ercis and the regional capital Van to house the homeless and those terrified of aftershocks, but this is a high plateau and the temperature falls below zero after dark at this time of year.
So for those camping out and struggling to survive under the broken concrete, it is a long, cold night.
Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Besir Atalay, in charge of the relief operation, said late on Monday that "from today there will be nothing our people lack".
Officials also were setting up more field hospitals and kitchens to help the thousands left homeless or too afraid to return to their homes amid continuing aftershocks.
But some survivors in the ethnic Kurd areas complained that not enough help was reaching them.
"Tents will not be enough - we do not have food, no rescue teams have reached here yet," said Serif Tarakci, an official from the village of Halkali, about 50km (30 miles) from Van.
"It's cold at night, everybody is outside and we're freezing here," the New York Times quoted him as saying.
Another resident of Van said that even tents were in short supply.
"All the nylon tents are in the black market now," Ibrahim Baydar, a 40-year-old tradesman from Van, told Reuters news agency.
"We cannot find any. People are queuing for them. No tents were given to us whatsoever," he said.
Opposition politicians earlier decried what they called "a lack of crisis management", saying that many people still lacked food, heating and tents.
It takes a while to assess needs, organize supplies, then get them to the area and distributed. Plan on living for a week or two on your bug-out supplies and whatever can gotten from the rubble.
They also said Ankara was wrong to refuse offers of foreign aid.
Ercis, population about 75,000, has been the worst hit, with some 80 collapsed buildings.
Much more at link