2023 Turkey-Syria Earthquake: The Kahramanmaras Disaster

The 2023 Turkey-Syria earthquake was one of the deadliest natural disasters of the 21st century. In the early hours of 6 February 2023, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck near Pazarcik in Kahramanmaras province, southern Turkey, followed about nine hours later by a magnitude 7.5 quake to the north. Tens of thousands of buildings collapsed across eleven Turkish provinces and northern Syria, killing more than 55,000 people and leaving millions homeless in the middle of winter.

Background: a fault under strain

Turkey is one of the most earthquake-prone countries in the world. Most of the country sits on the Anatolian plate, which is being squeezed westward between the Arabian and Eurasian plates. Its south-eastern edge is the East Anatolian Fault, which runs for hundreds of kilometres from eastern Turkey towards the Mediterranean.

The region had suffered great earthquakes before. Ancient Antioch, today’s Antakya, was devastated by an earthquake in AD 526 that killed an estimated 250,000 people. But the East Anatolian Fault had been relatively quiet in recent centuries, and seismologists had warned that strain was accumulating.

After the 1999 Izmit earthquake in north-western Turkey, which killed about 17,000 people, the country introduced stricter building codes and compulsory earthquake insurance. A modern seismic code followed in 2018. However, enforcement was uneven, and successive governments offered “zoning amnesties” allowing owners to register buildings that did not meet regulations.

The two earthquakes

The first earthquake struck at 4:17 am local time, when most people were asleep. Its epicentre was near Pazarcik, and it ruptured a section of the East Anatolian Fault roughly 300 to 350 kilometres long, one of the longest ruptures recorded on land. Strong shaking lasted well over a minute. Large aftershocks followed within minutes.

At 1:24 pm a second earthquake of magnitude 7.5 struck near Elbistan, about 95 kilometres to the north, on a separate fault. Many buildings already weakened by the first shock collapsed. On 20 February a further magnitude 6.3 earthquake hit Hatay province, causing more deaths and damage.

The sequence was exceptional for its size and complexity. Seismologists recorded thousands of aftershocks in the following weeks. Satellite measurements showed that the ground on either side of the fault had shifted sideways by several metres, by up to about 7 metres in places, and the rupture passed through densely populated valleys and cities. Shaking was felt as far away as Cyprus, Lebanon, Israel and Egypt.

Destruction and rescue

Entire neighbourhoods were flattened. In Antakya, the historic centre and many modern apartment blocks were destroyed, including the Habib-i Neccar Mosque, regarded as one of the oldest mosques in Anatolia. Kahramanmaras, Adiyaman, Malatya, Gaziantep, Osmaniye and smaller towns such as Nurdagi and Islahiye suffered heavy losses. Gaziantep Castle, a fortress dating back many centuries, was badly damaged.

Freezing temperatures and snow hampered rescue efforts and endangered survivors. Turkey’s disaster agency, AFAD, coordinated tens of thousands of rescuers, joined by teams from more than 80 countries. Rescuers pulled survivors from the rubble for more than a week, including some remarkable rescues after ten days or more. Survivors and opposition politicians criticised the slow arrival of help in some areas during the first critical days.

On 7 February President Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared a three-month state of emergency in ten of the affected provinces. The government later reported that more than 200,000 buildings, containing over half a million homes, had collapsed, been heavily damaged or needed urgent demolition.

International aid

The disaster drew one of the largest international search-and-rescue deployments ever mounted. Teams came from Europe, the Americas, Asia and the Middle East, and countries with difficult relations with Turkey also sent help. Greece, a long-time rival, dispatched rescuers and aid, and on 11 February an Armenian aid convoy crossed the closed Turkish-Armenian border for the first time in decades.

The United Nations launched appeals for both Turkey and Syria, and a donors’ conference in Brussels in March 2023 raised pledges of several billion euros. Field hospitals, tents, blankets and heaters were flown in, while Turkish citizens donated on a huge scale through national campaigns.

Syria: disaster in a war zone

Across the border, north-west Syria was already devastated by more than a decade of civil war. Many affected areas, including parts of Idlib and Aleppo provinces, were held by opposition groups, while others such as Aleppo city and Latakia were under the government of Bashar al-Assad. Millions of people in the north-west had already been displaced by the conflict.

Rescue in opposition-held areas fell largely to the White Helmets, a volunteer civil defence group. United Nations aid could enter only through a single crossing from Turkey, Bab al-Hawa, which had been damaged, and the first UN convoys after the earthquake carried mostly supplies planned beforehand. The UN’s relief chief acknowledged that the world had failed the people of north-west Syria. On 13 February the Syrian government agreed to open two more crossings for three months.

Among the worst-hit Syrian towns was Jindires, near the Turkish border, where many buildings collapsed. Counting the dead in Syria was especially difficult, because separate authorities kept records in government-held and opposition-held areas, and figures from the two sides were not always combined. Damaged roads, fuel shortages and international sanctions on the Syrian government further complicated relief, and several countries temporarily eased restrictions to allow aid to flow.

By the numbers

The Turkish government’s own estimate of the total cost, including economic losses, was much higher, about 104 billion dollars.

Accountability and recovery

The scale of building collapses led to public anger over construction standards. Authorities detained hundreds of building contractors, developers and officials, and courts began trials in the following years. Critics also questioned how the revenue from earthquake taxes introduced after 1999 had been spent.

Turkey launched a vast rebuilding programme, promising hundreds of thousands of new homes. Many survivors lived for months or years in tents and container cities, and hundreds of thousands of people moved away from the region, at least temporarily, to stay with relatives elsewhere in Turkey. Historic Antakya, once one of the great cities of the Roman and Byzantine world, faced the challenge of rebuilding while preserving what survived of its heritage. The disaster came three months before national elections in May 2023, in which Erdogan was re-elected.

Timeline

• 2023, 6 February, 4:17 am: A magnitude 7.8 earthquake strikes near Pazarcik, Kahramanmaras.
• 2023, 6 February, 1:24 pm: A magnitude 7.5 earthquake strikes near Elbistan.
• 2023, 7 February: Turkey declares a three-month state of emergency in ten provinces.
• 2023, 9 February: The first UN aid convoy after the quake enters north-west Syria via Bab al-Hawa.
• 2023, 13 February: Syria’s government agrees to open two more border crossings for aid.
• 2023, 20 February: A magnitude 6.3 earthquake hits Hatay province.

Why it matters

The 2023 earthquakes were a reminder that the deadliest part of an earthquake is often the buildings, not the shaking itself. Like the Haiti earthquake of 2010, they showed how weak construction and pre-existing crises can multiply the toll. They have become a central case study in earthquake engineering, disaster response and humanitarian access in conflict zones.