The European Union Delegation was awarded with a Gold Medal by the Turkish Red Crescent for providing accommodation to people left homeless by the earthquake that shook the province of Van on 23 October 2011; the EU extended 1,200 temporary housing units accommodating 6,000 people.
The Deputy Head of the European Union Delegation to Turkey Tibor Varadi received the Gold Medal from Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on behalf of the EU Delegation at the award ceremony hosted by the Turkish Red Crescent on 10 August 2012 in İstanbul Haliç (Golden Horn) Congress Centre.
The EU Delegation provided approximately TL 10 million of EU financial support for the building of 1,200 fully-insulated temporary dwelling units which were allotted to families whose houses had been demolished or were not in a condition conducive to residing. They hosted over 6,000 people.
In addition, approximately 6,600 family tents supplied by EU Member States had been dispatched to the region under the coordination of the European Commission's Humanitarian Office, ECHO and the Delegation of the European Union to Turkey. These tents sheltered around 35,000 people in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake.
