EARTHQUAKESEarthquake in Turkey Exposes Gap Between Seismic Knowledge and Action – but It Is Possible to Prepare

By Louise K. Comfort, Burcak Basbug Erkan, and Polat Gulkan

Published 16 February 2023

The final death toll is likely to place the recent earthquake in Turkey and Syria among the worst natural disaster. The sobering question to us, as disaster mitigation scholars, is whether this enormous loss of lives, homes and livelihoods could have been avoided. There is no way to prevent an earthquake from occurring, but what can be prevented – or at least curtailed – is the scale of the calamity caused by these inevitable tremors.

Two days after a devastating earthquake struck, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan visited one of the worst affected areas and declared that it was “not possible to be prepared for such a disaster.”

Certainly the scale of the destruction was unforeseen. The death toll from the earthquakes of Feb. 6, 2023, that struck Turkey and northern Syria is still climbing. But one week on, it has been documented that over 35,000 people were killed, with more than 50,000 injured and over 1,000,000 receiving aid for survival in bitter cold conditions. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake hit while many were sleeping in the town of Pazarcık in Kahramanmaraş, southern Turkey – the epicenter of the quake. It was followed nine hours later by a major aftershock in Elbistan, a town about 50 miles from the initial quake, sending buildings weakened in the first shock to total collapse.

The final death tolls are likely to place these two successive earthquakes among the worst natural disasters that have been witnessed in the world.

The sobering question to usas disaster mitigation scholars, is whether this enormous loss of lives, homes and livelihoods could have been avoided. There is no way to prevent an earthquake from occurring, but what can be prevented – or at least curtailed – is the scale of the calamity caused by these inevitable tremors.

In our view, any suggestion that a country cannot “be prepared” for an earthquake of the magnitude that hit Turkey and northern Syria is a political statement – that is, it reflects the political choices that were made rather than the science. In Turkey, the lack of preparedness contrasts sharply with the known conditions of seismic risk that the country faces.

Missed Opportunities
According to the Turkey Earthquake Hazard Map, which was revised and published in 2018, nearly all of Turkey is vulnerable to seismic risk, with two significant fault lines – the East Anatolian Fault zone and the North Anatolian Fault zone – crisscrossing the country.