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The Impact of the Earthquake in Syria and Turkey

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Read the following information about the earthquake and descriptions of its impacts on people. Background Information:

Before dawn on February 6, 2023, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit Turkey and Syria, with devastating impacts on the people living in the affected regions. The initial earthquake was followed by a series of aftershocks, including another 7.5 magnitude quake. The World Health Organization estimates that 23 million people could ultimately be impacted by the earthquake, with as many as 20,000 losing their lives. 1 Millions of people living in the region had previously been displaced by the 11-year civil war in Syria and were already vulnerable before the earthquake struck. 2 Within two days of the earthquake, almost 100,000 people in Turkey mobilized to help take care of people and search for survivors, 3 including volunteers from across the country and professional search and rescue teams from around the world. Distributing aid in Syria is more difficult due to the civil war, but local groups, such as the civil defense group known as the White Helmets, have organized search and rescue operations. 4

Excerpt from “ Syrian teacher recounts how children in Idlib refugee camp reacted to earthquake ,” in The Washington Post:

Ten hours after the earthquake woke her 40 students in an Idlib refugee camp [in Syria], Yosra Alahmad, who lives in Berlin and teaches the children virtually, finally heard from Mudar, the 23-year-old who helps facilitate the classes. They had all survived, he told her. The children lived in tents, so they weren’t at risk from a building collapsing on them. But nine were injured. “If you saw me yesterday, you would see my eyes were swollen from crying all day,” Alahmad told The Washington Post in Arabic. “It was one of the hardest days of my life.” Many of Alahmad’s students, ages 5 to 17, are orphans, their parents killed in the [Syrian civil] war. She sees them as her own children, and tries to parent and support them from Germany. They rely on each other to get food and survive in the camp, and didn’t realize that the shaking they felt and heard was not an explosion but an earthquake. “They thought they might die,” Alahmad said. They weren’t sure how long the ambulance sirens lasted, but the ringing seemed endless, she said. On the video call, several of her students passed around Mudar’s phone so Alahmad could see their eyes lit up by the screen — their faces were otherwise dim from the power outage. It was raining and cold, and none had jackets with them, they told her. It took hours to receive any food after the quake, and the injured children were waiting to be seen at the makeshift camp clinic, which had few doctors. Alahmad had known many of them since last spring, when she started teaching Arabic and English virtually in the An-Nur refugee camp, and hoped to send them aid. But as a refugee herself, Alahmad has little money. She plans to collect donations from her other Syrian friends in Germany and send it to someone in Turkey as soon as she can. She hopes the money will then get taken to another nearby refugee camp in northwestern Syria, she isn’t sure by whom, and eventually to the 40 kids. “I want to send help, but it’s hard,” she said. “It’s just tragedy after tragedy.” 5

Excerpt from “ More than 4,300 dead in Turkey and Syria after powerful quake ,” from CNN:

“We cannot use the buildings anymore. Maybe for hours. Maybe until tomorrow. I don’t know,” Dr. Mazen Kewara, Turkey director of the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS), told CNN from near the earthquake’s epicenter in Gaziantep, where he and his family were taking shelter in their car. “Next to my building, about 200-300 meters, there’s a collapsed building. There are many buildings that have collapsed in Gaziantep,” said Kewara. SAMS is a medical relief organization, working in Syria and neighboring countries. But their efforts to provide support will be hampered by the damage to buildings. “We have four of our hospitals damaged severely by the earthquake. We have evacuated two of them,” said Kewara, who is originally from Damascus, Syria. 6

• 1 “ Massive earthquakes in Turkey and northern Syria kill thousands, ” Economist, February 6, 2023.
• 2 “ Massive earthquakes in Turkey and northern Syria kill thousands, ” Economist, February 6, 2023.
• 3 Yasmeen Serhan, “ Everything We Know About the Deadly Earthquakes in Turkey and Syria, ” Time, February 9, 2023.
• 4 Sarah Dadouch and Paulina Villegas, “ Why is it so hard to help Syria’s earthquake victims?, ” Washington Post, February 8, 2023.
• 5 Turkey and Syria mourn quake victims as death toll tops 15,000 , Washington Post, accessed February 8,
• 6 " More than 4,300 dead in Turkey and Syria after powerful quake ”, CNN, accessed February 8, 2023.

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Facing History & Ourselves, “ The Impact of the Earthquake in Syria and Turkey ”, last updated February 10, 2023.

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Here's what we know about what caused the Turkey earthquake

Joe Hernandez

Geoff Brumfiel

A man searches for people in the rubble of a destroyed building in Gaziantep, Turkey, on Monday, Feb. 6, 2023. Mustafa Karali/AP hide caption

A man searches for people in the rubble of a destroyed building in Gaziantep, Turkey, on Monday, Feb. 6, 2023.

The area of Turkey and Syria that has been hardest hit by Monday's 7.8-magnitude earthquake and its aftershocks is known for having big quakes, but it had been decades since one this large last hit.

More than 5,000 people had died across the region.

Here's a look at what happened, geologically-speaking, and why it has caused so much damage.

Earthquakes are common in Turkey and Syria

The Arabian Peninsula is part of a tectonic plate that is making its way north into the Eurasian Plate, and the entire nation of Turkey is getting squeezed aside.

Middle East

Rescuers work for second day to find quake survivors as death toll surpasses 5,000.

"Arabia has slowly been moving north and has been colliding with Turkey, and Turkey is moving out of the way to the west," says Michael Steckler of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory .

That tectonic shift has been behind earthquakes for millennia in the area, including one that flattened the Syrian city of Aleppo in 1138. More recent quakes, such as the 1999 one that struck the city of İzmit, have killed many thousands.

A Turkish castle that withstood centuries of invasions is damaged in the earthquake

Monday's quake is believed to be the most powerful that Turkey has seen in more than 80 years.

This particular region was overdue for a big one

Most of the largest earthquakes in the past hundred years have been along the North Anatolian Fault.

But stress has been building along another major fault: the East Anatolian Fault. That fault has seen some big earthquakes in the past, says Patricia Martínez-Garzón, a seismologist at GFZ Potsdam, a research center in Germany. But more recently, there hasn't been as much activity.

"It was unusually quiet in the last century," she says.

The Picture Show

Photos: a devastating earthquake hits turkey and syria.

Some researchers had begun to suspect the fault was due for a major quake, according to Fatih Bulut, with the Kandilli Observatory and Earthquake Research Institute at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul. His research group and others had run computer models showing that this fault could have a magnitude 7.4 or greater earthquake.

"This is not a surprise for us," Bulut tells NPR.

But that doesn't mean that seismologists could say exactly when a big one would hit, according to Ian Main, a seismologist at the University of Edinburgh in the United Kingdom. The time between big quakes on a fault can vary quite a bit in unpredictable ways, he says. "They're not like buses, they don't come along on a timetable."

No, you cannot predict earthquakes, the USGS says

And not all the shaking has occurred on this one fault. The initial quake spilled over onto the Dead Sea Transform, another fault region where the Arabian, Anatolian and African plates converge. And a second, magnitude 7.5 quake took place hours later on a nearby fault that had been mapped but isn't part of the East Anatolian Fault.

"It's a pretty busy and complicated area with multiple fault systems," Steckler says.

This was a "strike-slip" earthquake

This earthquake occurred because "two pieces of the Earth are sliding horizontally past each other," Steckler says. It's the same kind of quake that occurs along the San Andreas fault in California.

In this case, the Arabian Plate is sliding past the Anatolian Plate.

That sliding motion also meant the shaking was spread out for many kilometers along the fault, says Bulut. The affected area "is quite large," he says. "Ten cities were structurally affected in Turkey."

Turkey has seismic codes to try to prevent buildings from collapsing, but Bulut says because this region has escaped a major quake for decades, it's possible that some older buildings are vulnerable. "Sometimes there are very old things, built before the rules existed," he says.

Steckler says he suspects that even some newer buildings may not have been up to code. "I know, certainly in Istanbul, there's a lot of illegal construction that goes on," he says.

More aftershocks are likely

The U.S. Geological Survey has already recorded more than a hundred aftershocks in the region, and experts expect they will continue for some time.

"That whole area, all the pieces of the Earth will slowly adjust and break and rupture and come to a new equilibrium," Steckler says.

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• Policy Notes 130

Disaster Dynamics: Assessing Middle East Responses to the Turkey-Syria Earthquake and Other Destructive Events

Sarah Cahn is a research assistant in The Washington Institute's Reinhard Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence

Erik Yavorsky is a development assistant with The Washington Institute, and previously held the position of research assistant within the Linda and Tony Rubin Program on Arab Politics at the institute.

Regional generosity was on display after the February 6 temblor, but aid decisions do appear to be driven by political considerations.

For a version of this essay with sources and additional images, download the PDF. 

The massive earthquake that killed more than 50,000 people in Turkey and Syria as of February 28—one of the worst Middle East natural disasters in recent memory—has touched the hearts of leaders and peoples across the world, triggering a flow of urgently needed humanitarian support. Regional states, too, have provided rescue and relief assistance. From the outset, however, politics has played an important role in shaping the scope and direction of such aid. In fact, the politics of humanitarian aid follows a pattern discernible based on previous regional responses to crises, including the 2020 Beirut port explosion and—before it—the 2014 Gaza war.

Aid to Turkey

After the earthquake struck on February 6, countries across the Middle East immediately sent financial aid, dispatched search-and-rescue teams, and provided emergency housing, food, and medical assistance to Turkey, which was at the epicenter of the quake. Politics did not impede this humanitarian support, particularly because of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s recent rapprochement with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Israel. Highlights of regional assistance to Turkey include the following:

• Qatar. Doha is—by far—Ankara’s closest regional ally. Qatar’s Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani visited Erdogan on February 13, making him the first world leader to meet the Turkish president after the earthquake. According to the Qatar News Agency, the country has sent a total of forty aircraft to Turkey and Syria. Qatar pledged 10,000 cabin housing units and so far has sent five ships carrying 1,388 of these. Qatar’s Regulatory Authority for Charitable Activities is coordinating a public donation campaign that raised $46 million, including $14 million from Sheikh Tamim himself, for use in both Turkey and Syria. The Qatar Red Crescent has also played an active role, allocating $1 million from its Disaster Response Fund for aid and pledging to raise at least $10 million more.
• UAE. According to the Emirati government, the Gulf country allocated $100 million in aid to Turkey and facilitated forty-two flights carrying 840 tons of aid. The government also set up two field hospitals and dispatched search-and-rescue teams.
• Kuwait. According to Turkish media, Kuwait has pledged $30 million in support to both Turkey and northwest Syria. As of February 23, eleven cargo aircraft have delivered five hundred tons of aid to Turkey. The Kuwaiti Ministries of Social Affairs, Foreign Affairs, and Interior also organized the “Kuwait by your side” popular campaign for donations to Turkey and Syria, which reportedly has raised more than $67.5 million to support victims.
• Bahrain. Bahrain’s Royal Humanitarian Foundation and the Bahrain Radio and TV Corporation organized a $3.7 million public donation campaign for Turkey and Syria.   Bahrain sent its first aid shipment on February 15 and its first aircraft to Turkey on February 21, carrying 55.7 tons of aid. A second shipment went to Turkey on February 26.
• Saudi Arabia. According to the Saudi Press Agency, as of February 24, Saudi Arabia had flown ten aid aircraft carrying more than 550 tons of relief items to Turkey and had sent at least two teams of relief workers to assist on the ground. Saudi Arabia has also committed to building three thousand temporary housing units for the displaced. As of February 23, the King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center had raised more than $122 million from a public campaign for victims in Turkey and Syria; it has not yet been delivered.
• Egypt. Egyptian president Abdul Fattah al-Sisi pledged five military cargo planes’ worth of aid. The Egyptian government has delivered at least 650 tons of aid, including tents, blankets, mattresses, and heaters via a cargo ship that arrived at the Mersin port on February 22. That same day, the Egyptian Armed Forces sent two military jets carrying medical aid.
• Iraq. The Iraqi government stated that it sent twenty-six planes with 136.5 tons of aid to Turkey, in addition to a search-and-rescue team. 
• Jordan. In total, the Jordanian government has sent twelve aid planes, twenty-eight relief trucks, and ten thousand tents to Turkey and Syria.
• Israel. Israel sent fifteen air force cargo planes carrying “hundreds of tons of equipment” and 230 volunteers to Gaziantep on February 7 to establish a field hospital. Before that, the Israel Defense Forces had already deployed 150 search-and-rescue experts to Turkey. In total, the Israeli team was the second largest sent to the country, after an Azerbaijani delegation.
• Iran. Since February 7, Iran has sent at least twelve cargo planes carrying humanitarian supplies and 126 individuals for search-and-rescue, medical, and emergency purposes. Furthermore, Iran has constructed two field hospitals in southern Turkey.

Aid to Syria

In contrast to disaster response in Turkey, regional support to assist victims in Syria—in both regime- and opposition-controlled areas—has been shaped by regional political dynamics. Some Arab states used the crisis as an opportunity to rebuild communication and political channels with the Bashar al-Assad regime, which is still under stiff international sanctions. Others maintained their longstanding opposition to Assad, focusing their rescue and relief support solely on opposition-controlled areas.

Regime-Controlled Syria

Foreign aid to Assad-controlled areas of Syria has broken down as follows:

• UAE. According to a dashboard developed by researchers Suhail al-Ghazi, Noor Abdulfattah, and Tarek Hamdan, as of March 2, the Emiratis had flown 134 aircraft carrying 4,413 tons of aid to Syria. Emirati foreign minister Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahyan visited Assad on February 12 in Damascus, marking the Syrian leader’s first meeting with a regional official since the earthquake struck. According to the UAE government, the Emiratis have pledged $100 million in assistance and have deployed search-and-rescue teams on the ground. Additionally, the UAE pledged to provide a health delegation to aid Syrian hospitals and ten ambulances.
• Iran. Iran had flown in fourteen aid aircraft as of February 28. Additionally, Iran helped set up 172 relief centers in and near Aleppo and initiated food delivery efforts. Esmail Qaani, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps–Qods Force, was dispatched to oversee Iranian aid efforts in Aleppo. He then traveled to Latakia, where he surveyed aid efforts and met with local officials including the provincial governor. Iran-backed organizations such as Hezbollah and Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces have also sent assistance to Syria.
• Egypt. Egypt delivered a ship carrying five hundred tons of aid to Latakia on February 21. Two weeks earlier, on February 7, Egypt sent three aid aircraft, landing in Damascus. According to Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, Egypt has delivered 1,500 tons of aid to Syria as of February 27.
• Iraq. The Iraqi Red Crescent Society and the Iraqi government flew approximately twenty-four aid flights into Syria carrying at least sixty-eight tons of aid, and sent a humanitarian aid convoy carrying 170 tons of supplies to Aleppo and Latakia.
• Bahrain. Bahrain has utilized the Nasib border crossing with Jordan to get aid into Syria, including forty-two tons of supplies delivered to the Deraa branch of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent on February 21. Bahrain also sent forty tons of aid via an aircraft that landed at Damascus International Airport on February 23. On February 27, Bahrain’s Royal Humanitarian Foundation and Syria’s Doctors Syndicate signed a memorandum of understanding aimed at providing medical treatment in Syria. Furthermore, as noted earlier, the Royal Humanitarian Foundation and Bahrain TV organized a $3.7 million donation campaign for both Syria and Turkey.
• Jordan. The Hashemite Kingdom sent aid convoys to Syria on February 9, February 18, February 20, February 27, and March 2. As of February 27, Jordan had flown three aid aircraft to regime-held areas of Syria.
• Saudi Arabia. Riyadh delivered three cargo planes of relief aid over February 14–16, carrying more than seventy tons of supplies to regime-controlled areas.

Opposition-Controlled Syria

In opposition-held areas, run either by the jihadist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham or the pro-Turkish Syrian National Army, aid has arrived as follows:

• Qatar. Qatari assistance has been bused in via Turkey. According to the Qatar Red Crescent Society (QRCS), the aid arrived as early as the second day after the earthquake, in the form of food baskets and five hundred tents. Later, the QRCS approved the construction of three hundred housing units and deployed doctors to Idlib. The state-run Qatar Fund for Development has said it will support the Syrian Civil Defense organization, known as the White Helmets, by providing logistical and rescue operations, ambulance repairs, and fuel. And in late February, Qatar announced plans to create an “integrated city” in northwest Syria to house some 70,000 people displaced by the quake.
• KRG. Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government sent thirteen humanitarian aid trucks to Jindires, a town in Aleppo governorate hard-hit by the earthquake.
• Egypt. The White Helmets publicly thanked Egypt for providing rescue specialists and medical personnel in the earthquake’s aftermath.
• Saudi Arabia. On February 11, Saudi Arabia sent eleven trucks carrying 104 tons of aid through the Syrian border crossing at Khusn al-Zaitoun. Similarly, on February 17, Saudi Arabia sent ten relief trucks carrying seventy-six tons of aid through the Bab al-Salameh crossing with Turkey. The King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center has distributed aid to victims in Jindires, Afrin, and Azaz , some of the worst-hit areas. Finally, on February 28, the King Salman Center sent twenty-two trucks through the Bab al-Hawa crossing and twenty-two trucks through the Bab al-Salameh crossing.
• Kuwait. The Kuwait Red Crescent Society (KRCS) is using more than $67.5 million crowdsourced from Kuwaiti businesses and residents to deliver aid, with logistical assistance from Kuwait’s government ministries. The KRCS has been delivering aid to northwest Syria since February 11, providing humanitarian supplies directly to victims. On February 22, the KRCS announced the dispatching of twelve aid trucks to both Turkey and northwest Syria. On February 26, the KRCS sent 120 tons of aid loaded in nine trucks to Syria.
• AANES. The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria facilitated the transit of 145 aid trucks into rebel-held areas. Additionally, two humanitarian aid convoys were provided by nongovernmental entities within AANES territory.

Response to the Earthquake vs. Earlier Humanitarian Crises

While not on par with the February 6 earthquake in terms of casualty figures or physical destruction, other recent humanitarian crises in the region have produced their own politically weighted patterns of humanitarian support.

Beirut Port Explosion of 2020

After the August 4, 2020, explosion in Beirut killed more than 200 people, injured more than 6,500, and damaged tens of thousands of structures, regional states rallied to provide financial assistance and humanitarian supplies to the Lebanese government and the Lebanese Red Crescent.

Qatar took the lead, providing $10 million to the UN-sponsored Flash Appeal for aid directly related to the explosion. According to the Financial Tracking Service of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Kuwait supplied more than $4.5 million for a variety of humanitarian aid and reconstruction projects outside the 2020 Flash Appeal. The tracking service reported that the UAE gave in excess of $4.1 million to explosion-related relief, with $312,189 going to the Flash Appeal and the rest benefiting the Lebanese Red Cross and Lebanese government. Meanwhile, the Saudi government provided at least $1.5 million to the 2020 UN Flash Appeal and $1.7 million outside this pipeline , using both state funds and the resources of the King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center. 

Other countries provided in-kind aid by air and land convoy. Iranian media outlets claimed Iranian sources had sent 155 tons of humanitarian aid, including food and medicine , and that the Iranian Red Crescent Society had established a field hospital in southern Beirut just four days after the blast. Iraq’s oil minister pledged to send thirty tankers containing one million liters of oil, after the country sent 800,000 liters in the immediate days after the blast. Egypt sent at least eleven aid flights to Beirut and opened a field hospital , as did Jordan. Turkey sent a search-and-rescue team, equipment, and tents just a day after the blast. Even Israel, whose army had been clashing with Hezbollah days before the blast, offered medical and other unspecified aid .

2014 Gaza War

Another episode that triggered a swift outpouring of humanitarian support was the Hamas-Israel conflict in July–August 2014, which—according to UN statistics—killed 2,251 Palestinians, injured more than 11,000, and damaged or destroyed some 18,000 housing units. In this instance, the largest Arab donor was Saudi Arabia, which—according to OCHA’s Financial Tracking Service—pledged $83 million in immediate support. Others sent much smaller sums: Kuwait, $13.1 million; Qatar, $6.5 million; and Bahrain, $5.2 million.

Additional aid, especially in-kind assistance, came outside UN channels. For example, Iran reportedly sent ninety-five tons of humanitarian aid to Gaza through Egypt, after the Egyptian government issued visas to an Iranian medical team to enter the area. For its part, the Egyptian military sent five hundred tons of aid via trucks that passed through the Rafah border crossing. Turkey also sent at least $1.5 million in medical supplies and food packages, in addition to bringing at least eighty Gazans to Turkey for medical treatment. Similarly, Jordan transferred at least 180 truckloads of relief to Gaza and the West Bank. During the same time period, Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories unit facilitated the transfer of humanitarian aid from American and Italian planes that landed in Israel and also the crossing of more than five thousand trucks into Gaza through the Kerem Shalom checkpoint.

In October 2014, two months after the conflict ended, Arab states made substantial pledges to rebuild Gaza during a donor conference in Cairo. Out of a total of $5.4 billion committed,   Qatar pledged $1 billion, Saudi Arabia pledged $500 million, the UAE and Kuwait pledged $200 million each,   and Bahrain pledged $6.5 million. But according to a Brookings Institution study that cited World Bank figures, only 22 percent of pledged aid, or $419 million, was actually distributed to Gaza.

During the 2020 Beirut port blast and the 2014 Gaza war, Qatar, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia were the top three regional providers of aid, although war costs were far greater than those associated with the port blast, as reflected in aid amounts. For example, the Emirates gave $200 million for Gaza support in 2014, vis-à-vis $2.5 million to Lebanon in 2020. For the earthquake, UAE donations to Turkey and Syria have already reached the $200 million mark, with more to come. (For a full breakdown of aid commitments by country and crisis, see figure 1, at the end of this study.)

Donations in the quake’s aftermath, however, have not always met the need. For example, Qatar provided more than $200 million to Gaza in 2014 but has given only $14 million to Turkey thus far and none to Syria. Similarly, Saudi Arabia’s contributions have not been equal to its past crisis responses; in Syria, it has provided limited aid to both regime- and opposition-held areas.

Provision of aid can shed light on trends in regional politics. In Turkey, the Emirates and Qatar have been the largest providers of pledged assistance among regional states. In recent years, Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE have all experienced rifts of varying degrees with Turkey, yet each of these states has provided aid to Ankara. Their earthquake assistance fits the mood of rapprochement. Similarly, the large Israeli delegation of engineers, rescue specialists, medical professionals, and aid personnel reflects the recent turnaround in Israel-Turkey relations.

In Syria, the UAE leads regional states regarding assistance to Assad-regime-controlled areas. The Emirates likely seeks to elevate its position as a regional power broker, using aid as a tool to support Assad and his disaster recovery efforts. Moreover, the UAE is leading the regional push toward full normalization with the Syrian regime; UAE foreign minister Abdullah bin Zayed has already met twice with the Syrian president in 2023, including in the latter’s first post-earthquake meeting with a high-level Arab official, as previously noted.

Other historic backers of the Syrian opposition, such as Qatar, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia, have taken different approaches. Qatar and Kuwait have provided assistance only to opposition-held areas. Saudi Arabia has taken a middle approach by supplying aid to both regime-held and opposition areas but providing more assistance overall to the latter.

Ultimately, while Middle East states have been important sources of aid following regional disasters, with the earthquake serving as an important case, politics does appear to play a role in determining the amount and the target of humanitarian assistance. The flow of aid reflects various shades of friendship, warming, and conflict, and also casts light on emerging changes in interstate dynamics.

Sarah Cahn is a research assistant in The Washington Institute’s Reinhard Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence. 

Erik Yavorsky is a research assistant in the Institute’s Program on Arab Politics. 

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Key developments in the aftermath of the Turkey, Syria quake

An elderly woman from the Teke family lies inside a tent at a camp for earthquake displaced people in Kahramanmaras, Turkey, Friday, Feb. 17, 2023. A 7.8 magnitude earthquake with its epicenter in Turkey’s southeastern Kharamanmaras province struck in the early hours of Feb. 6, followed by multiple aftershocks, including a major one magnitude 7.5 nine hours after the first tremor. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)

A car is smashed after a building collapsed due to the earthquake in Samandag, southern Turkey, Thursday, Feb. 16, 2023. The number of people killed in the Feb. 6 earthquakes that devastated parts of southern Turkey and northern Syria continues to rise. As chances of finding more survivors dwindled, some foreign search teams that rushed in to help have started leaving. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

Earthquake displaced people attend Friday prayers at a camp in Kahramanmaras, Turkey, Friday, Feb. 17, 2023. A 7.8 magnitude earthquake with its epicenter in Turkey’s southeastern Kharamanmaras province struck in the early hours of Feb. 6, followed by multiple aftershocks, including a major one magnitude 7.5 nine hours after the first tremor. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)

A man steps out of a green house where he and his relatives are staying after the earthquake in Samandag, southern Turkey, Thursday, Feb. 16, 2023. The number of people killed in the Feb. 6 earthquakes that devastated parts of southern Turkey and northern Syria continues to rise. As chances of finding more survivors dwindled, some foreign search teams that rushed in to help have started leaving. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

The son of the Sonmez family recovers a carpet from the family flat after the earthquake in Kahramanmaras, Turkey, Friday, Feb. 17, 2023. A 7.8 magnitude earthquake with its epicenter in Turkey’s southeastern Kharamanmaras province struck in the early hours of Feb. 6, followed by multiple aftershocks, including a major one magnitude 7.5 nine hours after the first tremor. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)

Children play in a camp for earthquake displaced people in Kahramanmaras, Turkey, Friday, Feb. 17, 2023. A 7.8 magnitude earthquake with its epicenter in Turkey’s southeastern Kharamanmaras province struck in the early hours of Feb. 6, followed by multiple aftershocks, including a major one magnitude 7.5 nine hours after the first tremor. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)

Osman Teke, 82, at a camp for earthquake displaced people in Kahramanmaras, Turkey, Friday, Feb. 17, 2023. A 7.8 magnitude earthquake with its epicenter in Turkey’s southeastern Kharamanmaras province struck in the early hours of Feb. 6, followed by multiple aftershocks, including a major one magnitude 7.5 nine hours after the first tremor. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)

Residentes remove their belongings from their destroyed house after the earthquake, in Samandag, southern Turkey, Thursday, Feb. 16, 2023. The number of people killed in the Feb. 6 earthquakes that devastated parts of southern Turkey and northern Syria continues to rise. As chances of finding more survivors dwindled, some foreign search teams that rushed in to help have started leaving. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

People recover items from a house affected during the earthquake in Kahramanmaras, Turkey, Friday, Feb. 17, 2023. A 7.8 magnitude earthquake with its epicenter in Turkey’s southeastern Kharamanmaras province struck in the early hours of Feb. 6, followed by multiple aftershocks, including a major one magnitude 7.5 nine hours after the first tremor. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)

Excavators work at the site of buildings that collapsed during the earthquake in Kahramanmaras, Turkey, Friday, Feb. 17, 2023. A 7.8 magnitude earthquake with its epicenter in Turkey’s southeastern Kharamanmaras province struck in the early hours of Feb. 6, followed by multiple aftershocks, including a major one magnitude 7.5 nine hours after the first tremor. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)

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KAHRAMANMARAS, Turkey (AP) — Rescuers have pulled more survivors from the debris of the Feb. 6 earthquake that devastated parts of Turkey and Syria even as the window for finding people alive shrank.

Here’s a look at the key developments Friday from the aftermath of the earthquake.

DEATH TOLL RISES

Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu updated the death toll in Turkey to 39,672, bringing the overall number of earthquake fatalities in both Turkey and Syria to 43,360.

The figure is certain to increase further as search teams retrieve more bodies amid the devastation.

The powerful magnitude 7.8 earthquake was the deadliest disaster in Turkey’s modern history.

MORE SURVIVORS RESCUED

Rescuers on Friday removed a survivor from the rubble of a collapsed building in the district of Defne, in hard-hit Hatay province, more than 11 days after the powerful earthquake struck.

Hakan Yasinoğlu, 45, spent 278 hours beneath the rubble, according to Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency. TV footage showed him being carried on a stretcher to an ambulance.

Search teams working overnight also found a woman and two men alive in earthquake wreckage.

The latest rescues came as crews began clearing debris in cities devastated by the earthquake .

Neslihan Kilic, a 29-year-old mother of two, was removed from the rubble of a building in Kahramanmaras, after being trapped for 258 hours, private DHA news agency reported late Thursday.

In the city of Antakya, police rescue crews found a 12-year-old boy named Osman alive after retrieving 17 bodies from a collapsed building.

“Just when our hopes were over, we reached our brother Osman at the 260th hour,” police rescue team leader Okan Tosun told DHA.

An hour later, crews reached two men inside the debris of a collapsed hospital in Antakya.

One of them, Mustafa Avci, used the mobile phone of a rescuer to call his brother and ask about family members.

“Have they all survived? he asked. “Let me hear their voices.”

UN AID CROSSES INTO SYRIA

A total of 178 trucks carrying aid from Turkey into northwest Syria have crossed the border since Feb. 9, the United Nations said.

Jens Laerke, spokesman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said the trucks are carrying a “multitude” of items from six U.N. agencies — including tents, mattresses, blankets, winter clothes, cholera testing kits, essential medicines, and food from the World Food Program.

U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said that according to recent assessments in Syria’s northwest, 50,000 households need tents or emergency shelter and at least 88,000 households need mattresses, thermal blankets and clothing. In addition, the U.N.’s partners says hospitals and medical centers “are overstretched and under-resourced,” he said.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, FAO, said it was working closely with Turkey to determine the steps needed to rehabilitate infrastructure in the agricultural sector damaged by the quake, including irrigation systems, roads, markets and storage capacity.

“In Syria, rapid assessments by FAO of areas affected by the earthquakes suggest major disruption to crop and livestock production capacity, threatening immediate and longer-term food security,” the Rome-based agency said in a statement.

SYRIANS’ RETURN

The bodies of at least 1,522 Syrians have been brought back to Syria from Turkey for burial, an official at the Bab al-Hawa border crossing said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a U.K.-based war monitor, reported that when the numbers from other, smaller crossings are tallied, the number of earthquake victims returned to Syria for burial is 1,745.

Syrian survivors have also begun crossing back from Turkey. Some 1,795 Syrians crossed from Turkey into Syria on Wednesday, the first day after Turkey agreed to allow Syrian refugees impacted by the earthquake to return to their country temporarily without losing their protected status in Turkey, an official at the Bab al-Hawa border crossing said.

The decision allows holders of Turkish temporary protection cards residing in earthquake-damaged areas to cross into Syria without having to obtain a travel permit from Turkish authorities. Normally, Turkey would consider Syrians holding protected status who crossed into Syria without a permit to have relinquished their status as asylum-seekers. They would be required to surrender their protection cards and banned from reentering Turkey for five years.

SPAIN TO TAKE IN 100 SYRIANS

Spain says it will take in some 100 Syrian refugees in Turkey that have suffered in the earthquake. Migration Minister José Luis Escrivá said the refugees would be those considered most vulnerable and badly affected by the quake.

Making the announcement late Thursday, Escrivá said “the earthquake reminds us of Syria’s drama in a tremendous way and we are going to try to help within our possibilities.”

OVER 1,500 CHILDREN SEPARATED FROM FAMILIES

Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay said the state was caring for 1,589 children who were separated from their families in the earthquake, including 247 who have not yet been identified.

He said 953 children had been reunited with their families.

Oktay also said search and rescue teams were working at fewer than 200 sites, with Hatay province accounting for the largest number.

Associated Press writers Jamey Keaten in Geneva, Frances D’Emilio in Rome, Ciaran Giles in Madrid and Abby Sewell in Beirut contributed.

Follow AP’s earthquake coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/earthquakes

The Failures of Turkey’s Earthquake Response

M ore than 37,000 people have died and tens of thousands have been injured as a result of the devastating earthquakes that impacted northwestern Syria and Turkey on Feb. 6.

The earthquakes—the deadliest in the world since Japan’s Fukushima in 2011—caused more than 5,600 buildings across southeastern Turkey to collapse, leaving people without shelter, and in great need of food, blankets, and fuel to leave the city and find safety. 10 provinces in Turkey are currently under a state of emergency for the next three months.

The Turkish government has received criticism for its disaster response—or lack thereof. In the hours following the catastrophe, there were no military forces sent to affected areas, leaving people to fend for themselves. Several residents reportedly attempted to get in contact with the Turkish Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency (AFAD), but were unable to do so successfully.

A resident of the badly-hit Turkish city of Antakya called the government’s response “shocking,” saying that there were minimal professional rescue teams or equipment from the government in the first two and a half days. He says that many family members that were able to get out of buildings during the earthquake stayed behind waiting for emergency response teams to arrive and help rescue family members still alive under the debris.

“You could hear people who were still alive under the rubble, trying to scream and say they were alive, but there was absolutely no one helping at that moment,” he says.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan acknowledged his government’s shortcomings in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake, saying that it was not “possible to be prepared for such a disaster.” The government initially had issues at airports and roads, but promised that things were now “under control.”

But that hasn’t stopped critics from pointing out that in the days following the earthquakes, Erdogan was seemingly focused on censorship and political goals. Here are the three biggest criticisms of the government’s response effort, and preparedness, so far:

Limiting access to Twitter

In the immediate aftermath of the quake, people took to social media to share their location, in hopes that rescue efforts would soon arrive . When no one did, many lashed out at the Turkish government for its poor disaster response, sharing photos and videos of what was happening on the ground.

Turkey then temporarily banned Twitter for 12 hours from Wednesday afternoon to early Thursday, largely limiting the contact survivors on the ground had with others.

Erdogan, who is seeking reelection in May, said he blocked access to the platform to stop disinformation from spreading and expressed outrage at the criticism the Turkish government faced. “In such a period, I cannot tolerate the viciously negative campaigns for the sake of simple political interests,” Erdogan said.

In October, Turkey passed a law that claimed to work to “criminalize the spread of misinformation.” But a Brookings report reveals the law actually functions as a way for the government to moderate social media platforms. People can receive up to five years in jail for posting false information that “disrupt[s] Turkey’s domestic and external security,” or “public order.”

The decision to restrict Twitter is reminiscent of a similar circumstance in 2014 , when the platform was previously banned after it spread leaked audio recordings of Erdogan ordering his son to transfer millions of dollars of cash out of the house when he learned authorities were raiding politicians’ homes.

Carrying out arrests

On Wednesday, Turkish authorities announced they arrested five people and put another 18 into custody for “provocative posts” related to the earthquakes, according to the Wall Street Journal . Law enforcement said that they had also identified more than 200 social media accounts that posted about the aftermath of this natural disaster, likely criticizing the government for its response.

Many have questioned why authorities were prioritizing arrests and taking down Twitter during a time of great devastation.

“Twitter has been an absolute lifeline in the aftermath of the earthquakes, both for rescuers to seek assistance and coordinate the provision of rescue equipment, and by those seeking missing loved ones,” Alp Toker, the director of internet-monitoring group Netblocks, told the Washington Post. “There is no obvious replacement to fill the gap.”

Negligent infrastructure practices

Turkey, which is located between two tectonic plates, has dealt with earthquakes for centuries, though this disaster is one of the strongest to impact the country since 1999, when a 7.6 magnitude earthquake killed more than 17,000 people.

That earthquake prompted the Turkish government to establish an earthquake tax and improve construction standards to better prepare for quakes. But experts told TIME that many newer buildings were not built up to code , and older buildings did not meet the set caliber.

“In terms of regulations, Turkey has the most state-of-the-art code in [the building] design process,” said Dr. H. Kit Miyamoto, a structural engineer at ​​Miyamoto International. “It’s the application where we have big problems. Both for the building capacity and regulation consistency.”

Miyamoto told TIME that because construction is a substantial industry in Turkey, the government often turns a blind eye to regulation. And economic differences between Eastern Turkey and Western Turkey means infrastructure standards have also vastly differed, making the impacted region even more vulnerable to quakes and the aftershocks.

This has affected the medical attention people have been able to receive following the quakes, with reports of medical centers like the Iskenderun Devlet Hastanesi hospital— which had an estimated 300 people inside—turning into rubble when disaster struck.

That lack of regard for building safety has angered thousands, inciting much of the public outrage Erdogan is trying to avoid.

“It’s not safe at all. The city here is totally destroyed. Basically there’s no one building that is not affected by this,” the Antakya resident says. “Even if a building stayed standing, it is still not safe to live in.”

Correction, February 16

The original version of this story misstated the location of two maternity centers supported by Doctors without Borders that were forced to evacuate due to the risk of collapse. They were in Syria, not in Turkey.

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Devastating earthquake in Turkey: a call for global action

Oduoye, Malik O. MBBS a,b ; Nazir, Abubakar MBBS b,c ; Gharaibeh, Reham S. BSc d ; Yoruk, Emirhan BA e ; Sulakci, Asim B. (BSc. Pol), B.Com f,g ; Nafula, Wechuli P. BSc, CMed h ; Akilimali, Aymar MD i,j

a College of College of Medical Sciences, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria

b Department of Research, Oli Health Magazine Organization, Kigali, Rwanda

c Department of Medicine, King Edward Medical University, Lahore, Pakistan

d Yarmouk University, Irbid, Jordan

e Department of Public Relationship and Advertising, Faculty of Communication, Istanbul Medipol University, Turkey

f Department of Political Science and Public Administration, Istanbul University, Turkey

g Department of Finance and Banking, Beykent University, Turkey

h College of Health Sciences, Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, Kenya

i Faculty of medicine, Official University of Bukavu, Bukavu, DR Congo DR Congo, South Kivu, Bukavu

j Department of Research, Medical Research Circle, Bukavu, DR Congo

This manuscript has been peer reviewed.

Sponsorships or competing interests that may be relevant to content are disclosed at the end of this article.

Published online 13 March 2023

* Corresponding author. Address: Faculty of Medicine, Official University of Bukavu, Bagira, Kagera rue 16, Bukavu 570, DR Congo. Tel: +243825177370. E-mail address: [email protected] (A. Akilimali).

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives License 4.0 (CCBY-NC-ND), where it is permissible to download and share the work provided it is properly cited. The work cannot be changed in any way or used commercially without permission from the journal. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

An earthquake is a natural phenomenon like wind and rain. It is a sudden and rapid shaking of the earth caused by the release of energy stored in rocks. Earthquakes have occurred for billions of years in some parts of the world, especially in African, European, and Mediterranean regions. Many stories along the history of man show the considerable impact they have had on human lives and property. Earthquakes are the most terrifying and destructive among the other natural phenomena like rain or wind 1 . A country like Turkey is a natural laboratory for earth sciences covering one of the most active regions on the earth prone to seismic effects. Due to the complex plate interaction among Arabia, Eurasia, and Africa, there are different fault systems in Anatolia and the surrounding region. The North Anatolian Fault System (NAFS) and the East Anatolian Fault System (EAFS) are the main strike-slip fault belts in Turkey. These fault systems facilitate the westward escape of the Anatolian micro-plate. Normal fault systems are dominant in western and central Anatolia because of the north-south extensional regime in the Aegean 2 .

On February 6, 2023, in the early hours of Monday, a strong earthquake slammed the southeastern part of Turkey close to the Syrian border, killing more than 4000 people and injuring thousands more 3 . The extraordinary magnitude earthquake centered in Turkey took place in the world press as “the biggest in the last 84 years.” It was the second biggest destruction that Turkey has experienced in the history of the republic. In an environment where the death toll exceeded 25,000 in the first few days after the earthquake. This region constitutes an important part of Turkey’s industry and trade, is now devastated 4 . This is a global health problem that needs urgent efforts in limiting further damage, especially on the vulnerable people; children, pregnant women, and the elderly.

This recent earthquake in Turkey which occurred close to the city of Gaziantep was quickly followed by a number of aftershocks, one of which was nearly as large as the initial one. Studies have shown that there are various types of earthquake faults around the world 5 . Displacement along these fault zones during an earthquake may result in various offsets. Such as; vertical, horizontal, or a combination of the 2. Foreshocks are relatively smaller earthquakes that occur before the largest shock in a series, which is termed the mainshock. Not all mainshocks have foreshocks 2 . Mainshocks are the largest shock. They are sometimes preceded by one or more foreshocks, and almost always followed by a series of aftershocks. Aftershocks are earthquakes that follow the mainshock. They are smaller than the mainshocks. They occur within an area of radius equal to or less than half the fault length of the mainshock fault. Aftershocks can continue over a period of weeks, months, or years, as we can see in the case of Turkey. In general, the larger the mainshock, the larger and more numerous the aftershocks, and the longer they will continue 1,2 .

Many people in Turkey and the world at large questioned why this current earthquake was so fatal. It was a significant earthquake; according to the official scale of magnitude, its magnitude was 7.8, classifying it as such. It ruptured along the fault line for around 100 km (62 miles), severely damaging the nearby structures. We anticipate a long recovery period for the share of the region affected by the earthquake in the Turkish economy to recover 4 . Turkey is likely to go into a major economic crisis in the near future, and as a country that is already in crisis, it will put a lot of pressure on this country 5 .

It will be very difficult for Turkey to come out of this disaster alone. For this reason, the support provided by the countries of the world to Turkey is necessary and very important. The people of the region, whose welfare level was low even before the earthquake, cannot reach basic life products without support as they are not in a position to earn money in the short term. Many of the shops and factories in the region became unusable. It will take a long time to remove the debris of tens of thousands of buildings and bury the dead, meanwhile, the people of the region are in serious danger as it is added to the hygiene problem of the region. If the world’s countries and international organizations do not support Turkey, Turkey, being one of the world’s 20 largest economies, will trigger major crises globally. It will also be an important test of conscience as well as the faith of the people of the world 4 .

As the notions of earthquake hazard, vulnerability, and capacity constitute the basis for an efficient strategy of earthquake risk reduction and the operational base for a culture of prevention 1 . As the occurrence of natural hazards/phenomena cannot be avoided, at least in the present state of our knowledge and ability; however, the impact of such events on humans and their proprieties can be reduced. Earthquake risk or damage reduction concerns all the measures taken before the next earthquake, which leads to reduce the consequences of such an event. An example of a tool to reduce the physical impacts on buildings is the seismic design code. Global health actions to reducing the negative impact of earthquake hazards are called earthquake prevention. These preventive measures are permanent and for the long term and are implemented before the earthquake disaster 1 .

The implementation of procedures and practices to reduce earthquake vulnerabilities and damage throughout a community/ society, to avoid (prevention), or to reduce (mitigation and preparedness) the negative impact of earthquake hazards are necessary 1 . These actions involve the people in that community/society and organizations to use existing resources to face abnormal, unusual, and adverse conditions of a disaster event are known as disaster management capacity 1 . While the capacity of a community or society to defend itself and recover from a disaster is called resilience 1–3 . Another tool to reduce earthquake risk is the early-warning. Early warning provides timely and effective information, through recognized institutions, that let individuals at risk of a disaster to take action to avoid or reduce their risk and prepare for effective response 1 .

In the case of Turkey’s present devastating earthquake, humanitarian services are highly recommended all over the world 1–5 . As part of the global action, emergency response team from all the neighboring countries such as Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iran, Iraq, Greece, and Bulgaria, including the world’s powerful countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, China, Germany, Russia, Japan, and Korea should dispatch as soon as possible to the incident scene. These countries should provide medical aid and supplies as well as food items, and clothes for all the victims affected by the earthquake. They should also take these victims as refugees in their countries to relieve them from their troubles. The World Health Organization (WHO) in collaborations with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), and other NGOs and civil organizations in the world should work harnessable with the Turkish government in providing relief funds, shelter, clothing, including food for the victims affected by the earthquake. Also, the World Medical Association (WMA) in collaborations with the National Medical Associations (NMA), including Medical Students Associations (MSAs) should deploy medical experts, health volunteers, medical students, nurses, psychologists, social workers, etc., to Turkey as soon as possible to treat the injured ones and prevent further complications as a result of the earthquake.

Finally, we recommend swift military protections by the Turkish government and also from the powerful Nations for the victims in Turkey as most of the vulnerable citizens are more in danger from other problems. Such as; sexual assault, child abuse, child trafficking, etc. Overall, all global health efforts should be harnessed adequately during this trying time for the Turkish population.

Ethical consideration

Sources of funding, author contribution.

M.O.O.: conceptualization of ideas; manuscript preparation; review with comments. E.Y. and A.B.S.: data curation. A.A.: administrative support. All authors contributed in the writing and final approval of the manuscript.

Conflict of interest disclosure

The authors declare that they have no financial conflict of interest with regard to the content of this report

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Aymar Akilimali.

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February 6, 2023

Why the Earthquake in Turkey Was So Damaging and Deadly

A magnitude 7.8 earthquake that struck Turkey is a rare occurrence and underscores the importance of setting and enforcing building codes

By Andrea Thompson

Rescue workers and volunteers conduct search-and-rescue operations in the rubble of a collapsed building in Diyarbakir, Turkey, on February 6, after a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck the country’s southeast. The combined death toll has risen to more than 3,000 in Turkey and Syria after the region’s strongest quake in nearly a century.

Ilyas Akengin/AFP via Getty Images

A major earthquake struck southern Turkey early on Monday, causing extensive damage and killing thousands there and in neighboring Syria. Rescue workers have been searching the rubble of buildings for survivors, who face bitterly cold winter temperatures, as well as electricity and water outages—and the terror of continuing aftershocks.

The magnitude 7.8 temblor struck close to Nurdağı—not far from city of Gaziantep—at 4:17 A.M. local time, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. It was also felt in Lebanon, Israel and Cyprus. The quake was followed by a magnitude 7.5 aftershock several hours later, as well as numerous smaller aftershocks. (The earthquake magnitude scale is logarithmic, so an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.0 is 10 times larger than one with a magnitude of 6.0. The former also releases 32 times as much energy as the latter.)

Monday’s quake involved a fault rupture that was relatively shallow—about 18 kilometers (11 miles) below Earth’s surface—making surface movements more intense. According to the New York Times , this earthquake caused the collapse of nearly 3,000 buildings in Turkey and killed more than 3,000 people across that country and Syria. [ Editor’s Note (2/13/23): The death toll has risen to more than 35,000 people . ] The toll of those killed and injured is expected to rise because of the region’s high population density, particularly among the number of Syrian refugees who often live in makeshift or otherwise less robust structures .

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To learn more about this notoriously seismically active region and why this earthquake was so damaging, Scientific American spoke with seismologist Ross Stein, CEO of the catastrophe modeling company Temblor.

[ An edited transcript of the interview follows .]

Why is Turkey such a seismically active area?

Turkey is squeezed by a giant tectonic vise. The Arabian subcontinent is shoving northward, and it’s pushing Turkey north against basically a fixed boundary of northern Europe. And so what happens is Turkey is squeezed outward to the west, where it spills into the Mediterranean and ultimately gets shoved underneath Crete in a subduction zone like we see off Japan.

How common are earthquakes of this size and intensity in Turkey?

They’re rare—that’s the short answer. They are probably on the order of a once-a-century kind of event. We did have a magnitude 7.8 earthquake in 1939. That was the beginning of the most spectacular falling-domino sequence of earthquakes the world has ever known. That ruptured the North Anatolian Fault over 1,000 kilometers—almost from one end to the other—in a series of 12 very large earthquakes over 60 years. It’s a slo-mo car crash, where one earthquake is triggering the next and the next and the next. Although we know that the San Andreas and other faults of this kind are capable of something like that, this is the clearest, simplest example we’ve known.

What makes these stronger quakes so rare?

In the kind of weird math of earthquakes, every time you bounce up one magnitude unit, you get one tenth of the occurrence rate. So as you go to larger and larger sizes, they become less and less frequent. There are arguments about that. Some argue that you can identify the maximum size of an earthquake that characterizes a fault. But I don’t think the data show that. In 100 years, if we have 20 magnitude 7’s, we should have two magnitudes 8’s. Roughly speaking, that’s what we see.

And can they get still larger? Nobody knows. The hubris of the seismic community is to argue that we can divine how large an earthquake can be [on a given fault]. On the East Anatolian Fault [where the recent earthquake occurred], lots of researchers had kind of pegged the maximum magnitude in the neighborhood of 7.4.

This earthquake ruptured over a fairly long stretch, about 400 kilometers, and was followed by a magnitude 7.5 aftershock. Can you talk about these and any other interesting aspects of this quake?

So one of the things that we do, that Temblor does and a lot of scientists do, is try to calculate how one earthquake changes the conditions for failure around it. We call this “Coulomb stress triggering.” And we made a calculation last night, which we sent out to our clients, where we showed that this earthquake should light up parts of the East Anatolian Fault, farther to the north and to the south. And we had a magnitude 7.5 early this morning [ET] in, basically, that blowtorch zone. So it was kind of similar to what we saw in the falling-domino sequence along the North Anatolian Fault—which means this may not be over. Earthquakes are in a kind of chain reaction; they converse by the transfer of stress. One earthquake might drop the stress on the section that ruptured, but it transfers it to other sections. Aftershocks tell us that story. Aftershocks don’t just occur where their rupture took place. They occur around it over fairly large distances.

Why was this earthquake particularly damaging?

The number one factor is building quality. It just trumps everything else. Building quality is controlled by a building code and the enforcement of that code. Turkey went through the terrible 1999 Izmit earthquake, which killed [more than 15,000] people, so Turkey had modern building codes within a few years of that earthquake. So then you say, “Well, given that, why do buildings fail? Are these buildings older than 20 years ago? Or were the buildings built in a manner that was not properly reinforced?”

After that Izmit earthquake in 1999, I was there. We were inspecting a factory. You build a strong building with reinforced concrete, which is the standard building material the world over. What you do is: You have rebar—you have these steel rods that are inside the columns and beams. And you concentrate the strength and the density of those at any corners, any junctions, because that’s where the earthquake stress is going to be concentrated.

So we were inside this failed manufacturing plant, and I could see there was a big crack at one of these joints—big enough that I could get my hand in to see how many reinforcing rods were in there. I put my hand in, and I pulled out a hunk of Styrofoam. The world would be a safer place if concrete was translucent. This is the problem: it’s too easy to cheat.

I don’t know if the buildings that fell [in the recent quake] are older buildings or poorer buildings, so I’m not accusing anybody of anything. But this is the problem worldwide, not just in Turkey.

What other things would you like people to be aware of with the risk of earthquakes?

I think it’s a reminder. I think what’s happened over the past five years is: people willed themselves to believe that earthquakes don’t occur anymore, and it’s now just floods and wildfires. So that’s definitely the view in California. It’s kind of willful blindness. It’s understandable, because it’s been a long time in California [since a major earthquake]. So this is a reminder of what can happen in a very San Andreas–like setting, that big earthquakes do happen. This is our future. And the difference between a relatively harmless earthquake and a disaster is how well we build our buildings and how well we prepare.

If people want to do one thing—and it costs $1—to make themselves safer in earthquake country, put an international orange whistle on your keychain. And the reason is: if you’re trapped in a building, no one is ever going to try to dig you out unless they know you’re alive. You can’t yell for very long before you use up all your moisture, nor can you be heard very far. With this whistle, you can be really loud for a really long time.

Maddie Burakoff, Associated Press Maddie Burakoff, Associated Press

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• Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/what-to-know-about-the-massive-earthquake-that-hit-turkey-and-syria

What to know about the massive earthquake that hit Turkey and Syria

NEW YORK (AP) — A major 7.8 magnitude earthquake followed by another strong quake devastated wide swaths of Turkey and Syria Monday, killing thousands of people.

Here’s what to know:

What happened?

The quake hit at depth of 11 miles (18 kilometers) and was centered in southern Turkey, near the northern border of Syria, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Many aftershocks rocked the two countries since the initial quake. In the first 11 hours, the region had felt 13 significant aftershocks with a magnitude of at least 5, said Alex Hatem, a USGS research geologist.

READ MORE: Death toll rises from powerful earthquake in Turkey, Syria

Another strong quake — magnitude 7.5 — hit Turkey nine hours after the main jolt. Though scientists were studying whether that was an aftershock, they agreed that the two quakes are related.

“More aftershocks are certainly expected, given the size of the main shock,” Hatem said. “We expect aftershocks to continue in the coming days, weeks and months.”

What type of earthquake was this?

Researchers said the earthquake was a strike-slip quake, where two tectonic plates slide past each other horizontally.

The Earth is divided up into different pieces, “kind of like a jigsaw puzzle,” said Eric Sandvol, a seismologist at the University of Missouri.

Those pieces meet at fault lines, where the plates usually grind against each other slowly. But once enough tension builds up, they can snap past each other quickly, releasing a large amount of energy.

In this case, one plate moved west while the other moved east — jerking past each other to create the quake, Hatem said.

Over time, aftershocks will start to die down and become less frequent, Sandvol said.

Are earthquakes common in this area?

The quake occurred in a seismically active area known as the East Anatolian fault zone, which has produced damaging earthquakes in the past.

“Almost all of Turkey is really seismically active,” Sandvol said. “This is not something new to the country.”

Turkey was struck by another major earthquake in January 2020 — a magnitude 6.7 that caused significant damage in the eastern part of the country. In 1999, a 7.4 magnitude quake struck near Istanbul and killed an estimated 18,000 people.

Why was this earthquake so devastating?

The earthquake was powerful — especially for a quake that hit on land. Typically, very strong earthquakes occur underwater, Margarita Segou, a seismologist with the British Geological Survey, said.

On top of that, the quake hit near heavily populated areas. The epicenter was near Gaziantep, a major city and provincial capital in Turkey.

The affected regions were also home to vulnerable buildings, said Kishor Jaiswal, a USGS structural engineer.

While new buildings in cities like Istanbul were designed with modern earthquake standards in mind, this area of southern Turkey has many older high-rise buildings, Jaiswal said. Rapid construction in Syria — plus years of war — may have also left structures vulnerable, researchers said.

READ MORE: What’s at stake in Turkey’s military escalation in Syria?

Officials reported thousands of buildings collapsed in the wake of the earthquake. They included “pancake” collapses, where upper floors of a building fall straight down onto the lower floors — a sign that the buildings couldn’t absorb the shaking, Jaiswal said.

Rescue efforts have been hampered by freezing temperatures and traffic jams from residents trying to leave quake-stricken areas.

“This is the awful level of devastation and destruction that we would expect to see” when a strong quake hits a region with buildings that have not been shored up, said Ilan Kelman, an expert in disasters and health at University College London.

AP journalists Jill Lawless and Cassandra Allwood contributed to this report.

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• 06 March 2023

What Turkey’s earthquake tells us about the science of seismic forecasting

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Two decades ago, John McCloskey drew a red line on a map of southeastern Turkey to pinpoint where a large earthquake would probably strike. The only question was when.

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Nature 615 , 388-389 (2023)

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Turkey to join South Africa's genocide case against Israel in international criminal court

Aug. 7 (UPI) -- Turkey filed papers to the International Court of Justice on Wednesday to join South Africa's genocide case against Israel in connection with its war in Gaza .

Turkey becomes the first member of the European Union and NATO to take the position in the ICJ against Israel, which possibly could pressure the Jewish state to come to a cease-fire agreement with Hamas in the 10-month war. Advertisement

Turkey's news agency Anadolu reported that a delegation from the country, including its ambassador to The Hague, Selcuk Unal, filed the document to join the suit.

"[Turkey's] decision to intervene reflects the importance our country attaches to resolving the Palestinian issue within the framework of law and justice," Turkey's foreign ministry said, according to Al Jazeera . "The conscience of humanity and international law will hold Israeli officials accountable."

Turkey Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said on social media that the other countries must step in to demand action.

"Emboldened by the impunity it has received for its crimes, Israel is killing more and more innocent Palestinians every day," Fidan said on X. "The international community must do its part to stop the genocide and put the necessary pressure on Israel and its supporters. Turkey will make every effort on this path." Advertisement

In December , South Africa filed a case in the ICJ accusing Israel of genocide in its occupation of Gaza. Israel has denied the charge, saying it has the right to defend itself against Hamas, which started the altercation with an attack on Israel last October.

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Over the past few days, the simmering feud between Israel and the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, has reached a critical moment.

Ben Hubbard, the Istanbul bureau chief for The New York Times, explains why the latest tit-for-tat attacks are different and why getting them to stop could be so tough.

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Ben Hubbard , the Istanbul bureau chief for The New York Times.

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Israel says it killed a Hezbollah commander , Fuad Shukr, in an airstrike near Beirut.

The Israeli military blamed Mr. Shukr for an assault on Saturday that killed 12 children and teenagers in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights.

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The Daily is made by Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Sydney Harper, Michael Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens, Rowan Niemisto, Jody Becker, Rikki Novetsky, Nina Feldman, Will Reid, Carlos Prieto, Ben Calhoun, Susan Lee, Lexie Diao, Mary Wilson, Alex Stern, Sophia Lanman, Shannon Lin, Diane Wong, Devon Taylor, Alyssa Moxley, Olivia Natt, Daniel Ramirez and Brendan Klinkenberg.

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Ben Hubbard is the Istanbul bureau chief, covering Turkey and the surrounding region. More about Ben Hubbard

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