Turkey-Syria Earthquake

Awareness: Turkey-Syria Earthquake Building Devastation

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Image Source: "Buildings destroyed in Turkey." VOA via Wikipedia Commons

Cause: On February 6, 2023, 4:17 AM TRT, there was a devastating earthquake that registered at a magnitude of 7.8 near the epicenter, in Gaziantep, Turkey near the Eastern Anatolian Faultline. These earth moving events (aftershocks) continued on the same day until it triggered another major earthquake in Kahramanmaras province of Turkey. It measured 7.7 magnitude at 13:24 PM, TRT with a depth of 6.2 miles (10 km). Over 500 aftershocks were reported within 24 hours of the first earthquake, and continued until the end of February. (1)

Effect: The 2023 earthquake effected the Turkish and Syrian people and their infrastructure. There were a total of 2.5 million people displaced, (2) and overall there were 6,000 deaths in Syria and over 50,000 in Turkey. The effect of the earthquake caused the oil distribution, energy, transmitted communication, water, and roads to dismantle. Among the damage were a considerable number of affected homes and buildings. In Syria there was a total of 18,000 damaged homes in Aleppo and Idlib, which are the closest districts near Turkey. The damaged and destroyed buildings in Turkey were over 1 million.

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Image Source: "Debri removal in relief efforts in Turkey," VOA, Wikipedia Commons

Humanitarian Endeavors in Turkey-Syria

There were organization, agencies, and governments who provided search, rescue, and monetary aid response efforts for the surviors and victims of the Turkey earthquake. They include the Arabic Middle East countries, the US, UK, Israel, Azerbaijen, India, Indonesia and other countries around the world. However, in Syria because of the Assad government, who often withholds aid; there was limited help for those displaced. (3) However, despite this, many sanctions towards the Assad governance were lifted, temporarly for the distribution of aid from this massive earthquake. In addition, there were two additional border crossings into Turkey for the distribution of goods and services by humanitarians.

One of the initial tallies is to locate, identify and determine the effected buidings to begin search efforts. In Turkey and Syria this became a daunting task with over 200 million tonnes of debri (2) for responder to search. Nonetheless, Humaniatarian analyst must tally information concerning these locations to determine the injured, the survivors, and the casualties of the earthquake, so that they can assess needs, form future crisis scenarios and share this data with other organizations.

Visual Data: MAP

Below is a map that assesses how many damaged homes or buildings were destroyed/damaged during the first months after the earthquake event.

Source:

(1) "List of aftershocks of the 2023 Turkey–Syria earthquake". Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aftershocks_of_the_2023_Turkey%E2%80%93Syria_earthquake#Aftershocks. Last updated: January 2025.

(2) Mavroulis, Spyridon, Maria Mavrouli, Emmanuel Vassilakis, Ioannis Argyropoulos, Panayotis Carydis, and Efthymis Lekkas. 2023. "Debris Management in Turkey Provinces Affected by the 6 February 2023 Earthquakes: Challenges during Recovery and Potential Health and Environmental Risks" Applied Sciences 13, no. 15: 7-8. https://doi.org/10.3390/app13158823.

(3) "Earthquake in Syria and Turkey February 2023. "House of Commons 2025. February 15, 2023. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9727/.