The earthquake in Turkey and Syria was the strongest in the region in decades

The strongest earthquake with a magnitude of 7.8 points in the south-east of Turkey and northern Syria with an epicenter near the Turkish city of Gaziantep occurred in the early morning of February 6. The second strongest was a 7.6-magnitude quake that followed later in the province of Kahramanmarash near Gaziantep. The strongest blows were followed by several dozen subsequent (aftershocks).

In Syria, both the territories controlled by the authorities and the province of Idlib, occupied by formations of the armed pro-Turkish opposition, fell under the blow of the elements. Russia has announced assistance to Syria and Turkey. The earthquake led to a fire at the container terminal in the Turkish port of Iskenderun, explosions on Turkish gas pipelines in the earthquake area, and the largest Syrian oil refinery in Baniyas was also stopped due to damage. Roads were destroyed everywhere in the area of ​​the strongest shocks.

According to the Turkish Ministry of Health, at 20.20 Moscow time, 1,651 people died, 11,119 residents were injured, 2,834 buildings in dozens of cities were destroyed, the rubble continues to be cleared and the number of victims could increase significantly. The earthquake affected seven Turkish provinces.

According to official data from the Syrian Ministry of Health, at 16.40 Moscow time, the death toll from the earthquake reached at least 403, 1284 people were injured. The Al Jazeera TV channel, without specifying a source, calls the total number of victims in Syria at 783 people, taking into account the areas not controlled by Damascus. Railway traffic has been suspended in the country.

The current catastrophe cannot be considered the most powerful in Turkey, says Anna Lyusina, associate professor of the Department of Earth Physics at Moscow State University. Tremors of approximately the same strength in this seismically dangerous region occur every 30 years, as the North Anatolian fault passes through Turkey, the expert says. Earthquakes in a particular region can be predicted in a few months, Russian scientists expected it in the area of ​​this fault, but so far no one can name its exact coordinates, time and energy in advance, Lyusina explained. In 1999, an earthquake with an epicenter near the Turkish city of Izmit, 90 km south of Istanbul, claimed the lives of 17,217 people.

In the Turkish province of Mersin, 250 km from the epicenter, tremors of magnitude 3.9–4 were felt. There is a construction site for the four-unit nuclear power plant Akkuyu, which is being built by the Russian state corporation Rosatom.

The physical commissioning of the first power unit is scheduled for this year, it is timed to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the Republic of Turkey, which will be celebrated at the end of October. A representative of the Russian state-owned company said that the earthquake did not affect the progress of work at all power units.

In the coastal provinces of Tartus and Latakia, military facilities of the Russian Ministry of Defense are located – the naval base in Tartus and the Khmeimim military airfield. The Telegram channel of the Russian Defense Ministry reported that there were no casualties or damage at Russian military facilities. At the direction of Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, the Russian military began to provide assistance to the affected civilian population.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that the current earthquake was the largest for the country since 1939. Turkey has received offers of assistance from 45 countries, as well as the UN, EU and NATO. Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke with Turkish leader and Syrian President Bashir al-Assad by phone, expressing condolences to them. Both interlocutors of Putin expressed their readiness to accept the help of Russian rescuers.

Neighboring Israel, which regularly strikes at Iranian targets on Syrian territory, also announced its readiness to provide assistance to Syria in connection with the earthquake. The Israeli edition of Ynet, citing sources, reports that Damascus turned to Tel Aviv for help, but not through Turkey, but through Russia. Israel, the newspaper writes, is ready to provide medicines, tents, blankets, as well as to host the wounded Syrians and provide them with medical care.

It is still premature to make long-term predictions about how a natural disaster could accelerate Turkey-Syria rapprochement, which has been underway since late 2022, says Kirill Semyonov, an expert at the Russian International Affairs Council. According to him, it is possible to coordinate countries in the field of rescue operations and rendering assistance to the population, but it is difficult to say how far it will go. The earthquake could also trigger a new wave of migration from Syria to Turkey, as the regions of Idlib and Northern Aleppo have been hit hard. This will be a problem for the Turkish authorities, but may be a field for possible cooperation between Turkey and Syria, Semyonov says. Israel’s willingness to provide humanitarian assistance is also curious, Semyonov notes. Against the background of existing relations between the two countries, this is in many ways a beautiful gesture, the expert argues.

In the East, such tragedies have a noticeable rapprochement effect on the victims, says Amur Gadzhiev, a researcher in the Turkish sector at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences. According to him, when people are faced with the same grief, the intuitive desire of the inhabitants of the affected regions for mutual assistance will be natural. The expert recalls that in Turkey there is even a special term for such a phenomenon, which is translated into Russian as “unity of destinies”. Moreover, such initiatives from below are likely to be supported at the government level as well. Hajiyev believes that the political consequence of the earthquake will be the strengthening of mutual understanding between Ankara and Damascus in the course of upcoming contacts, which will inevitably lead to an accelerated process of rapprochement.

After the earthquake, most likely, there will be a “humanitarian break” in relations between Syria and Turkey and a weakening of confrontation in the border areas, but the situation will not have a strong impact on the settlement of their relations, Andrey Zeltyn, a senior lecturer at the HSE School of Oriental Studies, believes. Their political rapprochement can rather be served by the fact of the almost coinciding interests of Turkey and the Syrian authorities in northern Syria, which was shown by the negotiation process that intensified at the end of 2022. As for the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement about readiness to provide assistance to Syria, it was predictable, it can also help him shift the focus of attention from the intra-Israeli political crisis, the expert says.