The devastating earthquakes on February 6, 2023, in southern Turkey caused the loss of more
than 40,000 lives, as well thousands of injuries and the displacement of entire region of more
than 10 large cities and many thousands of small towns and villages. The latest estimate
indicates that as many as 40 million people have been impacted in this region in Turkey and
its neighbors.
As the members of the Steering Committee of the IEEE BlackSeaCom series of conferences
and the Organizing Committee of the IEEE BlackSeaCom 2023, we are deeply saddened by the
loss of lives and would like to express our deepest sympathy for the millions affected by this
terrible disaster. Our thoughts and prayers are with the people of this region as they begin a
long and painful recovery process. We are committed to providing whatever we can as the
conference to help during this difficult time.
We are in the process of planning several ways of helping the academics and professionals from
affected regions so that they can participate in the conference. Some possibilities we are
considering is to increase the travel grants to more students and colleagues, reducing and/or
waiving the already low registration fees, directing the sponsorship/patronage fees toward the
participants from the affected regions. We plan to extend the same to those colleagues from
Ukraine, which has been through a devastating war for the past year or so.
The earthquakes have caused so much suffering of millions of individuals in the region, but we
are hopeful that the time tested incredible resilience of the people will help them through this
time as well.
