Turkish aid agency helps Gaza’s poor during Ramadan

By Mohammed Majid

GAZA CITY, Palestine

To roughly coincide with the seventh anniversary of the death of nine Turkish activists off the Gaza Strip’s coast in 2010, Turkey's Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH) has launched its “Martyrs of the Freedom Flotilla” aid project.

Six civilian ships in a Turkish aid flotilla were attacked by Israeli forces in international waters on May 31, 2010 as they tried to break Israel's crippling siege of the Gaza Strip.

Nine Turkish nationals were killed in the incident and 30 others injured, including one who succumbed to his injuries nearly four years after the incident.

The project aims to provide fresh food -- on a daily basis -- to poor Gazan families, especially during the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

Such charity projects, known as “takiyya” in Arabic, date back to the Ottoman era, when they were established to help feed poor local communities.

Mohammed Kaya, director of the IHH’s Gaza branch, says the project -- officially launched last year -- is of especial importance during Ramadan.

“The objective of the takiyya is to alleviate the suffering of the people of Gaza and provide food for the strip’s neediest families,” he told Anadolu Agency.

“It now provides meals on a daily basis for more than 600 families from across the Gaza Strip,” he added, putting the project’s total cost at some $70,000.

Basma, a beneficiary of the project who preferred not to give her full name, said the takiyya had provided her and her children with desperately-needed meals during Ramadan.

“I have had no income since my husband died two years ago,” Basma, 45, told Anadolu Agency. “I didn’t know how I was going to feed myself and my three children.”

“But, thank Allah, the Turkish takiyya has provided me and my children with food throughout most of the week,” Basma said.

“Economic conditions in Gaza are difficult,” she lamented. “I usually can’t provide my family with food every day.”

Since 2007, Gaza’s roughly two million inhabitants have groaned under a crippling Israeli-Egyptian blockade -- now in its tenth year -- that has deprived them of many basic commodities, including food, fuel and medicine.

As a result, some 80 percent of the Gaza Strip’s population now depends on international aid to survive, according to estimates.