Hatayspor sporting director Taner Savut found dead after earthquake in Turkey

• Hatayspor sporting director Taner Savut found dead after earthquake in Turkey.
• His body was recovered from the rubble on Tuesday.
• About 46,000 were killed in the February 6 quake.

Taner Savut, sporting director of Hatayspor, was recovered from the rubble on Tuesday. His body was found more than two weeks after a 7.8-magnitude earthquake devastated parts of Turkey and neighboring Syria, according to Primicia.

The earthquake on February 6 has left nearly 46,000 dead. Striker Christian Atsu, a Ghanaian national who played for Hatayspor and lived in the same 12-story building as Sayut in Antakya was also found dead last week. Antakya, the city where Hatayspor plays, is located in southern Turkey, the region hardest hit by the quake.

TANER SAVUT FOUND DEAD IN THE RUBBLE

Hatayspor reported that it was «deeply saddened» by Savut’s death. Other top division teams offered their condolences, as did the Turkish Football Federation. The contractor for the Ronesans Rezidans building, where Atsu and Savut lived, was arrested more than a week ago at Istanbul Airport, when he was apparently trying to leave the country.

This news has caused a commotion not only in the world of football, as it has also been confirmed that entertainers and well-known personalities are still missing. The earthquake is a horrible tragedy.

WHAT DOES TURKEY NEED?

Dr Tahsin Cinar, a vacationing anesthesiologist who went to help in Hatay as a representative of the Turkish Medical Association, said the survivors need help with their mental health. “They feel very alone, abandoned and very distressed. A small tremor produces a great reaction of anguish,” he stressed. Cinar and other volunteers provided emergency aid to people with physical injuries. They now see increasing signs of psychological trauma, depression, and the stress caused by a lack of safe housing, winter weather, and the lull in education. «There is almost nothing to create social welfare,» he said.

The UN World Food Program (WFP) said Monday’s tremor frightened employees distributing food to hundreds of thousands of people in Turkey and northwestern Syria. Employees are sleeping in their cars in freezing temperatures as they try to get work done, the WFP said. Some 13.5 million people live in the 11 affected Turkish provinces, where more than 139,000 were destroyed or so damaged that they will need to be pulled down, authorities said.