Paesi
Countries
In Italian, we use articles before country names because they are considered as nouns, and, as such, they require a determiner to specify their gender and number.
The choice of the article to use depends on the gender and the starting letter of the country’s name. For example, we use the masculine article “il” before most countries that are masculine in gender, such as “il Brasile” (Brazil) or “il Giappone” (Japan). Conversely, we use the feminine article “la” before most countries that are feminine in gender, such as “la Francia” (France) or “la Spagna” (Spain).
However, there are some exceptions to this rule, such as “l’Argentina” (Argentina), which is feminine in gender but starts with a vowel, so we use the neutral article l’.
Additionally, some countries’ names that are plural in form, such as “gli Stati Uniti” (United States) or “le Filippine” (Philippines), require the plural articles gli or le.
In the second sentence, “il terribile terremoto in Turchia” is used with the preposition “in” because it’s indicating a location. In Italian, “in” is used to indicate being physically inside a country, city, or place, so in this case, the preposition “in” is used to express the idea of being inside the territory of Turkey.
and 
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