Koç : WE WHOLEHEARTEDLY BELIEVE THAT WE WILL OVERCOME THESE DIFFICULT DAYS TOGETHER AND IN SOLIDARITY

February 15th, 2023

On February 6, 2023, our country was shaken by one of the biggest natural disasters in our history. The earthquake disaster, which directly affected ten of our provinces and caused unimaginable destruction in some of our city centres has left us heartbroken.

We are mourning tens of thousands of our fellow citizens who lost their lives. We wish God's mercy to all our citizens who lost their lives, condolences and the strength to bear it to our country and a speedy recovery to the injured.

As Koç Group we have, since that first day, been working comprehensively with Koç Holding, our companies, Vehbi Koç Foundation and VKV Health Institutions to heal the wounds of our country and reach those in need quickly.

We took part in search and rescue operations in cooperation with AFAD. A total of 531 of our trained and well-equipped colleagues took part in the rescue efforts, saving lives of 117 of our citizens.

We rushed to the aid of our people by activating all of our means in coordination with the relevant public institutions and organisations.

We came together in a spirit of mobilization and solidarity.

The amount of aid we have provided so far to meet urgent needs has passed 200 million TL. In addition, we continue to provide the financial support needed by our business partners and customers in the region.

In the coming period, we have allocated a further 1.8 billion TL for the projects we will carry out within the scope of providing shelter, health, education and supporting children affected by the earthquake. So, with what we have done so far, we have allocated a total of 2 billion TL to our project-based aid.

In the areas identified by the Government, we will create temporary living quarters consisting of 5 thousand containers, housing nearly 20,000 people, including social amenities. We also started to work on the container health centre project, to include the necessary equipment.

In addition, using our trucks, we will continue to meet the hot food, laundry and cleaning needs in the region.

We are aware that just allocating financial resources will not be enough to heal the wounds of such a terrible disaster. We will harness the expertise and experience of our workforce

consisting of 110 thousand people so that we can quickly complete all stages of our project from the design of the aid project to implementation in the field.

As we did until now, we will use all our resources to normalise and develop economic life in the region. As always we stand by our business partners in the region. On this subject, we encourage all our stakeholders with whom we work both at home and abroad to support the region.

As our late founder Vehbi Koç said "We exist as long as our state and country exists." We will decisively do our part to heal the wounds of this terrible earthquake disaster as we have strived to provide support for the last 97 years. We wholeheartedly believe that we will overcome these difficult days together and in solidarity.