Millions of people, including children, adults, corporations, religious minorities, organizations and labour unions in Türkiye and several other countries joined a massive fundraising campaign to heal the wounds of earthquake survivors on Wednesday.

Moderated by TV personalities Nihat Hatipoğlu, Pelin Çift, model Çağla Şikel, media mogul Acun Ilıcalı, and others, the fundraiser, titled “Türkiye United As One” was held live in a joint broadcast shown on many TV channels, including BRT1.

Actors, singers and other famous figures answered calls from donors, which included children, soldiers, diplomats, corporation CEOs and more, who pledged to make donations to Türkiye’s Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) and the Turkish Red Crescent (Türk Kızılay).

A total of ₺115.1bn was collected from donations as well as 9 million text messages.

Joining the live broadcast in a call, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said he has full faith that the campaign would collect an unprecedented amount of donations from the people, which will show their big hearts. He also said that all the funds raised in the campaign would be spent solely on earthquake survivors.

Also joining the broadcast, President Ersin Tatar said that the Turkish Cypriot people stood by their motherland Türkiye.

He said that a similar fundraising campaign had been held at Bayrak Radio Television Corporation (BRT) and that the Cyprus Turkish Solidarity Platform was collecting donations for the construction of a container city for the İskendurun area.

Tatar added that he himself was donating three months of his own salary.

The UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres who also joined the broadcast called on the world to support Türkiye which he pointed out had welcomed so many Syrian refugees into its borders because of the war.