Bosnian students write comfort letters to their Turkish quake victim peers

By Ismail Ozdemir

SARAJEVO (AA) - Primary school students receiving Turkish language education in Bosnia and Herzegovina made drawings and wrote comfort letters on Wednesday for the children affected by the devastating Feb. 6 earthquakes in southern Türkiye.

Students of the "My Preference is Turkish" program by the Yunus Emre Institute (YEE) wrote letters including Turkish expressions like "We are sorry for your loss, our prayers are with you," "Get well soon, my Türkiye," "We are with you our brothers and sisters."

"Brother Türkiye, although the earthquake happened in your land, it shook us deeply here. Fault fractures became like our life fractures. I wish all the wounds would be healed quickly," a student wrote.

Mehmet Akif Yaman, the director of YEE in Sarajevo, told Anadolu that donations were collected from all parts of the country for the earthquake zones in Türkiye.

He said that students donated their clothes and pocket money to support the aid. "Our students learning Turkish prepared beautiful cards and letters for their brothers and sisters and friends affected by the earthquake in Türkiye and sent them to us. We hope to alleviate the children's sadness there to some extent by delivering them to the earthquake regions."

"I hope that when our children in Türkiye see these, they will communicate with the Bosnian children here in the future when the conditions normalize and reinforce their brotherhood and friendship. We will contribute to the communication in Bosnia and Herzegovina," Yaman added.

Noting that Turkish has been taught in Bosnia and Herzegovina since 2011, Yaman said: "At the moment, nearly 6,500 students are learning Turkish and there are 98 teachers in nearly 200 schools."

The magnitude 7.7 and 7.6 quakes were centered in Kahramanmaras and struck 10 other provinces – Adana, Adiyaman, Diyarbakir, Elazig, Hatay, Gaziantep, Kilis, Malatya, Osmaniye, and Sanliurfa. More than 13 million people have been affected by the devastating quakes, claiming more than 45,000 lives.