EXCLUSIVE - 'Even in this horrible moment, I see hope everywhere,' Mehmet Oz says during visit to quake-hit Türkiye

HATAY, Türkiye

Taking a walk between the collapsed buildings in Türkiye's quake-hit Hatay province, renowned Turkish-American heart surgeon Mehmet Oz told Anadolu that he still sees hope in the "nightmare."

“There's a lot to process, the nightmare that I'm witnessing, you look inside these buildings, … these families were not able to leave their homes … there are bodies buried under these remains from buildings that people lived in for years,” Oz said, pointing to the collapsed buildings.

The Turkish people have already created a “safety net” as they are “incredibly giving and they leaned on each other,” he said, calling it “good news.”

“Even in this horrible moment, I see hope everywhere I turn,” he said. “Just today, I witnessed a man, who had been under this rubble for 300 hours, got pulled out, and he's gonna survive, I'm confident.”

He was referring to Samir Mohammed Ajjar, who was rescued on Saturday in the 296th hour after massive earthquakes hit the region.

Earlier in the day, Oz met Ajjar at Mustafa Kemal University Research and Application Hospital in Hatay, where he also visited other earthquake victims.

Ajjar and his wife, who were rescued from the wreckage, were taken to the hospital by ambulance, while their children could not be saved despite the intervention made after the rescue.

“The people who are hurt are often the health care workers, the people who provide the first line of defense to a population. They're gone,” Oz said.

“And that has led to a need for people to do things way beyond what would normally be expected,” he added.

Quakes in Türkiye to hit world's ability to help refugees

“Turkey’s massive contribution for humanitarian aid and medical refugees is what I think that many appreciate, but this disaster is going to create a big strain on the world's ability to provide infrastructure support for refugees and disaster areas,” Oz said.

Türkiye is one of the largest humanitarian donors globally and hosts the highest number of migrants.

“We need to mobilize all humanity to be able to deal with already close to 50,000 deaths to be a lot more by the time we're done excavating this rubble and pulling out the 100,000 people who are missing because some of them are under that rubble,” he continued.

The quake zone is huge, 70-80% of the buildings collapsed and the ones that remain probably are not viable but there is a need to attract attention to the fact that “doctors and nurses, people who could actually man the hospitals with themselves are in trouble,” he said.

“We have to be able to provide shelter for these health care providers and food,” Oz said. “And that is an urgent issue that's required right now in Turkey, they both needed to have the health care personnel move around the country to provide infrastructure support.”

Calling Americans “generous,” he said that he has been pushing on his social channels to make them donate since the first day of the disaster. “And it's happening.”

“What we have to do in Turkey, it's not just done with the acute humanitarian crisis, which everyone's focused on now. But to recognize that we have three or four years of a lot of work to rebuild this part of the planet,” he said. “We got to get the ruins behind me off the streets, put in solid buildings on a base that's reliable and safe.”

“And I am confident we will,” he added.

Regarding the intent behind his visit to the quake-hit region, Oz said: “A lot of the work can be done remotely, but you have to actually go see yourself because I couldn't imagine what I would have seen here, the massive impact of this earthquake.”

“And once you are here and you see it firsthand, you'll never forget it,” he said, adding that it would make him a “much better spokesperson” to try to raise support, money and resources for the Turkish people.

He also underlined the importance of giving pep talks to the first responders in hospitals, saying they can all benefit from feeling the support.

“I think that's what most of the world needs to do, especially for the next few weeks,” he concluded.

Ajjar's rescue a 'wonderful miracle'

Halit Yerebakan, a cardiovascular surgeon from Istanbul who was accompanying Oz, said that when he walked on the streets in the collapsed neighborhoods he tried to imagine “what happened in the first 24 hours when a whole neighborhood was destroyed, and people's cries for help” after the twin earthquakes.

Yerebakan described the Ajjar’s rescue as “a wonderful miracle.”

“Hearing the stories the man told, I think there are great lessons to be learned, we will have many pieces of advice to pass on to future generations,” he added.

When the search and rescue operations are finally over, the order must be established “as soon as possible”, and living conditions must be “sustainable” here, he said and extended his condolences to the nation, as well as to the families of victims.

The quakes affected a wide area across 11 provinces in Türkiye, where more than 13 million people reside. So far in Türkiye, over 40,642 people have died and tens of thousands injured.