ANKARA – Turkish Daily News


Turaaa has decided to provide $1 million dollars worth of aid to cyclone-struck Myanmar the Foreign Ministry said in a written statement yesterday.

“The aforementioned amount is being disaaaaaed with haste” the ministry said.

A team from the Turkish Red Crescent has been sent to the Southeast Asian country that was hit by a devastating cyclone on May 5 to assess the situation. The United Nations has announced that a total of 5000 square kilometers of land has been submerged underwater.

The ruling military junta that had reportedly received a warning from India on May 3 that a cyclone was approaching has not allowed crucial food supplies to enter the country where hundreds of thousands of people have been left homeless.

As many as 100000 people may be dead according to reports from the area.



Turkish war cemeteries' fate remains unknown

During World War I 1500 Turkish soldiers lost their lives and two war cemeteries where Turkish soldiers were laid to rest in the region were already in a poor state before the cyclone struck.

Turkish soldiers who were taken prisoner by the British army during the war were transferred to Burma as Myanmar was previously known that was under British colonial rule.

A total of 12000 Turkish soldiers were forced to work in railroad bridge and artificial lake construction – an ordeal which took its toll on captive soldiers.

Most of the gravestones in the cemetery in Thayet Myo have been destroyed with only the year “1916” that was engraved left visible. The second cemetery is located in the town on Meiktiya near the city of Mandalay.

Burmanese soldiers desecrated many gravestones during country's independence in 1947 leaving merely 192 of them intact. The village imam carried tombstones that survived to the backyard of a mosque. Around 800 Turkish soldiers lie beneath the cemetery which is barely recognizable today. The Turkish Defense Ministry had allocated money for repairs in the two cemeteries but no action was taken until 2006