Attachments
TIMELINE
6 February 2023: A magnitude 7.7 earthquake occurred in Pazarcik, Kahramanmaraş, Türkiye followed by aftershocks at a maximum level of 6.7 and an earthquake of 7.6 in Elbistan, Kahramanmaraş the following day in the same region.
6 February 2023: Interior Minister announced the highest-level alarm including the international assistance request. AFAD (Disaster and Emergency Management Authority) declared the earthquake as a Level 4 earthquake within the scope of Türkiye Disaster Response Plan and started the process of damage detection together with the other official organizations.
6 February 2023: CHF 2M was allocated from the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC)’s Disaster Response Emergency Fund (DREF) and Emergency Appeal was launched.
8 February 2023: IFRC Surge Capacity (Rapid Response Personnel) was activated initially for the roles of operations management, membership coordination, health in emergencies and communications.
8 February 2023: IFRC issued Emergency Appeal for a Federation-wide funding ask of CHF 120M for 300,0000 people until December 2023.
7 February 2023 President Erdogan announced a state of emergency in the affected 10 provinces for three months and declared seven days of national mourning around the country.
16 February 2023: According to AFAD, 11 provinces were confirmed as being affected by the Earthquake.
DESCRIPTION OF THE EVENT
A magnitude 7.7 earthquake occurred in Türkiye at 4:17 am on 6 February 2023, followed by eighty three aftershocks at a maximum level of 6.7. An additional separate earthquake of 7.6 occurred at 1:24 pm the following day in the same region. The additional earthquake further exacerbated the situation and heavily impacted rural and hard-to reach areas in the Toros mountains and inner Anatolia. Damage assessments and search, rescue and recovery efforts are currently ongoing.
The earthquake has impacted critical infrastructure, damaging most airports in the region, although service for all airports was restored as of 12 February. Road closures hampered aid delivery and while most highways have now been cleared, secondary roads, particularly those in cities, still have significant access issues. Power outages and lack of access to safe drinking water access are still a major concern for the affected population one week after the earthquake. Significant numbers of medical service centres were affected, with 15 hospitals across 10 provinces damaged.
The Earthquake struck in the region that had been affected by a protracted humanitarian crisis since the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011. As a result of the crisis Türkiye is hosting over 4 million refugees, of whom around half lived in the southeast border region near Syria. These refugees are hosted by Türkiye under the temporary protection regime, which allows them residency in Türkiye and access to social services. Tensions between refugees and host communities have been rising before the earthquake, with the past three years representing a steady degradation of social cohesion in the affected areas.
An additional issue is the ongoing economic crisis.
The Turkish economic crisis has been felt hard in the southeast region, as it already represented one of the poorest areas of the country with higher poverty rates than the coastal areas along the west coast4 .
The area is also prone to earthquakes, with the potential of further large aftershocks.