Heavy downpours have battered Istanbul, turning streets of the Turkish metropolis into raging rivers and causing tragedies. According to data cited by the KTK TV channel's website, Kazakhstan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has commented on the fate of Kazakh citizens currently in Istanbul, reports infohub.kz.
Earlier reports said Istanbul had registered 1,277 flooding cases, 15 landslides and 47 incidents in which people were trapped. Rescuers received a total of 2,518 calls. Classes were suspended in the city, and motorcycles were banned from the roads.
Kazakh Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhanbolat Usenov said: "There are 1,240 Kazakh citizens on the consular register in Istanbul. No Kazakh citizens have approached diplomats for help in connection with the floods. The situation is under control."
According to Channel Seven, Kazakh citizens are also in Istanbul, where heavy downpours have turned streets into raging rivers. For example, Kazakh citizen Zhaskanat Sapashev had to escape the flooding in Istanbul together with his seriously ill mother.
They have been in Turkey for six months, where the woman is undergoing cancer treatment. She uses a wheelchair. The day before, the hotel where they were staying was flooded. They had to move to another hotel in pouring rain. Their clothes and belongings got soaked, and at the worst possible moment the electricity and water were cut off. Now Zhaskanat and his mother are afraid to go outside even briefly.
"Yesterday towards evening the rain started coming down really hard, and we were just moving from one hotel to another with my mother. And right as we were moving, at that moment the electricity was cut off and the water was cut off. It actually looks a bit scary, because it's the first time in my life I've seen rain like this. And yesterday my mother and I didn't go out anywhere. We just moved and that was it," the Kazakh citizen said.
The rain is not letting up, and the forecasts are grim, Zhaskanat says. His friends, students from Kazakhstan, have also been left without electricity and water.
Meanwhile, according to the "Turistik Qamqor" fund, there are currently 266 organized tourists from Kazakhstan in Istanbul. "However, the real number of our compatriots in the metropolis is significantly higher. After all, this statistic does not include those who came to Turkey on their own, without the help of travel agencies. How many such Kazakh citizens ended up in the bad weather zone is still unknown," the report said.