Turkey: Siblings gifted TV to follow remote lessons

HAKKARI, Turkey

A family in Turkey’s southeastern Hakkari province has recently been gifted a television for their children, who are taking remote lessons like every other student in the country amid coronavirus outbreak.

The Arici couple, Arif and Halime, asked for help from Tahir Sakli, mayor of Semdinli district, for their children who could not follow the lessons because there was no television or computer at their home.

Mayor Sakli aspired to grant the family’s wish and contacted a businessman to get a television for the family so that the children can continue with their lessons remotely, a government initiative following the closure of the schools for pandemic fears.

5th-grade student Ayetullah Arici (10) and his elder sister Sevdanur (14), who started to follow their lessons on television, thanked the mayor and the businessman for their assistance.

8th-grade student Sevdanur Arici said, “We could not follow our lessons because we did not have a television. We asked for television from our mayor, he gave us television and we started following our lessons.”

Shortly after schools were shut down out due to the coronavirus outbreak in Turkey, 18 million students began receiving online and TV school lessons through the country's Education Information Network (EBA) and public broadcaster TRT EBA which were launched

on March 23 and will continue until April 30.

Lessons are set to start at 9 a.m. (0600GMT), and students will also have the opportunity to watch lessons later in the evening. Lessons will also be available on the EBA website.

As many as 79 more people died of the coronavirus in Turkey in the past 24 hours, the Turkish health minister said on Thursday, bringing the death toll to 356.

The total number of confirmed coronavirus cases surged to 18,135, as 2,456 more people tested positive for the virus in a day.

The novel coronavirus has surpassed one million infections worldwide after emerging in China last year, according to data released Thursday by Johns Hopkins University.

There are 1,030,628 confirmed COVID-19 cases globally, including 54,137 deaths and 218,771 recoveries, according to the U.S-based university's running tally.

* Writing and contributions by Idris Sulun in Istanbul