There are dozens of cars and crowds of people lined along the dusty roads of Yaylakonak, in the Adiyaman province of Türkiye. The people have gathered here for mourning on the 36th day since the earthquake. Nearly three thousand people have gathered in this town, built on a high hill, to remember their loved ones.
"We have 100 funerals here alone,” says Abuzer Aydin, the Mayor of Yaylakonak, as he leans against the debris on the hill of what’s left of his town. “Our houses and stables collapsed. Our water channels were destroyed. Over a thousand animals perished; our beehives were demolished, and even the surfaces of our fields were destroyed."
A predominantly agriculture area, Adıyaman is one of the provinces that suffered the most from the 7.8 magnitude earthquake and aftershocks almost as strong that ravaged much of southern Türkiye and northern Syria. The death toll in this province alone reached 3 500. The number of buildings here that are severely damaged, have collapsed or urgently need to be demolished total almost 11 000, with nearly 31 000 homes affected.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is supporting government-led efforts to help earthquake-affected communities sustain and recover basic food production, while further assessing agricultural damage and needs at a wider scale. The preliminary assessments indicate significant impacts to agriculture, with estimates of USD 1.3 billion in damages and USD 5.1 billion in losses to the sector.
The Fertile Crescent suffers heavily
The 11 provinces hit by the earthquake are also known as Türkiye's "Fertile Crescent", an area made up of 4 million hectares of agricultural land. In total, 15.3 percent of the country’s agricultural products are generated in these earthquake-affected provinces. It is also home to a total of 15.73 million people, including 1.73 million Syrian refugees.