The earthquakes of 6 February 2023
Two huge earthquakes centred near Kahramanmaraş devastate southern Turkey and northern Syria, killing more than 50,000 people in Turkey alone.
- Turkey-Syria earthquake of 2023 — Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Turkey: A Modern History (4th edition) — Erik J. Zürcher, I.B. Tauris (2017)
At 4:17 in the morning on 6 February 2023, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck near Pazarcık in Kahramanmaraş province. About nine hours later a second quake of magnitude 7.5 hit near Elbistan. Eleven provinces with about 14 million people were affected; tens of thousands of buildings collapsed onto sleeping families in freezing winter weather.
- Turkey-Syria earthquake of 2023 — Encyclopaedia Britannica
More than 50,000 people were killed in Turkey and thousands more in Syria. Volunteers, miners and rescue teams from across the world dug through rubble for days, and stories of survivors pulled out after a week gripped the country. Anger focused on building contractors and on repeated “construction amnesties” that had legalised unsafe buildings, and on the slow arrival of state help in the first days.
- Turkey-Syria earthquake of 2023 — Encyclopaedia Britannica
Why it matters today
The earthquakes were the deadliest disaster in modern Turkish history. Nearly everyone knows someone who lost family, and cities such as Antakya, ancient Antioch, were largely flattened. The anger at shoddy construction and slow rescue is still raw, and in a country crossed by fault lines, including one near Istanbul, the fear of "the next one" is constant.