The Anglo-Turkish Earthquake Relief Fund 1939

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the earthquake that hit the area around Gaziantep in southern Turkey close to the border with Syria before dawn on Monday, 6 February 2023, was the country’s worst disaster since 1939. The war-ravaged northern border of Syria was also deeply affected by the 7.8 quake where most of the casualties were predominantly in the cities of Aleppo, Hama, Latakia and Tartus.

Erzincan destruction 1939

The disaster that Erdogan referred to was the 1939 Erzincan earthquake that also struck early in the morning of 26 December while most people slept. Seven violent shocks, the biggest measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale resulted in the loss of nearly 33,000 lives, injuring 100,000 and made several hundred thousand homeless. Ninety villages and 15 cities over an area of 30,000 square kilometres were completely destroyed in what is called the North Anatolian Fault Zone (NAFZ). The earthquake created a 360-km-long surface rupture, traces of which are still visible, and produced a strong tsunami wave of up to a metre high that swept across the eastern coast of the Turkish Black Sea in less than an hour. 

International response to the unfolding tragedy was prompt. On the British side, Sir Wyndham Deedes, an eminent British Army officer, civil administrator and a Turcophile, travelled to the region accompanied by archaeologist Professor John Garstang to distribute a wide ranging package of relief on behalf of the Anglo-Turkish Earthquake Relief Fund, an appeal initiated by George Lloyd, Lord Lloyd of Dolobran, then chairman of the British Council. His wartime colleague, Stewart Newcombe, was invited to join the executive committee and became its vice-chair. 

S.F. Newcombe

Newcombe knew many of the distinguished members that came forward to help coordinate the appeal for money, clothing, blankets, and medical supplies. Garstang was joined on the committee by fellow archaeologists Leonard Wooley and Max Mallowan and by Newcombe’s old colleagues from Egypt and the Hejaz such as Ronald Storrs, Colonel Buxton, and the Earl Winterton. One name stands out on the list - that of Lady Paul, known to many as the White Lady of Constantinople, an extremely courageous woman who had done much to ease the suffering of allied prisoners-of-war in Turkey, going so far as to facilitate escape and evasion at great personal danger. She had been instrumental in connecting Newcombe to leading Turkish officials seeking an armistice agreement when he was an escaped prisoner living undercover in Constantinople.

A mountain of aid in the form of clothing, blankets, medical supplies and even a fleet of ambulances were handled by a team of volunteers working day and night at a relief depot set up at St. Thomas’s Hospital in London. Clothing sufficient to aid 48,000 survivors were sent out to the affected area in the first month. The British press played up a story that a second-hand clothes depot had donated a quantity of policemen’s uniforms. “Police blue to clothe Turks” ran one of the headlines. Within 48 hours of the appeal reaching Lord Trent, chairman of Boots the Chemist, a donation of drugs was made to the value of £500. Over a two-day period, 27,000 letters were handled by the Post Office, most containing cash or cheques from as little as a halfpenny to £1000. Jewellery was donated to be converted into cash and one woman even sent in her engagement ring as she said her late husband had deep affection for the country. The £77,000 collected from British sympathisers was immediately spent on reconstruction materials such as galvanised iron sheets and roofing felt as well as extra clothing needs. 

First-hand report from Sir Wyndham Deedes

At this point the committee recommended stopping the general appeal due to the prevailing wartime conditions. They thought that the best help that could now be given was the erection of a modern hospital in Erzincan as a permanent token of friendship and so committee members were dispatched across the UK to seek financial contributions from leaders in commerce and industry. With the committee setting the total needed at £50,000, Newcombe travelled with Wyndham Deedes to various parts of the UK to promote the idea. 

Ultimately, it seems likely that the total destruction of Erzincan and its subsequent abandonment as a city led to the Fund reallocating its assets to other pressing needs. Erzincan was later founded as a new town on a fertile plain to the north.  

George Lloyd by William Roberts

Following the unexpected death of Lord Lloyd on 4 February 1942, the committee held its last meeting on 21 February.  The final accounts show how amazingly philanthropic the British public and industry leaders were during those early war years with a total donation of cash and in kind, as well as a significant concession from shipping and railways, amounting to a staggering £82,300 (equivalent to £4,961,152 in 2023 money). The balance of the Fund’s assets were later handed over to the Turkish Red Crescent Society with the proviso that £5,000 shall, in accordance with the wishes of the donors, be spent in Great Britain for the purchase of hospital equipment and medical supplies.

When the committee closed its books, the Second World War was already into its third year. The work of the Anglo-Turkish Earthquake Relief Fund, the prodigious efforts of a legion of volunteers, and the unbridled generosity of the general public at a time of great personal hardship, stands as a timely reminder of how powerful the cumulative effect of a thousand single acts of compassion to strangers in times of despair can be.