Lots of images and videos from the February 6, 2023 earthquakes in Türkiye and Syria have spread over the Internet.

Faktyoxla Lab. has verified the authenticity of several of these images and videos.

 

 

On February 6, Twitter and Telegram users shared a video in which Türkiye is allegedly being hit by a tsunami caused by tremors. We did a reverse search on a still frame from the video and found that the video was actually filmed on March 12, 2017, when one of the beaches in the South African city of Durban flooded.

TikTok users have shared videos of flashes of light in the night sky that allegedly could be observed in Türkiye before the earthquake. The same video was published on its website by the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper. In fact, it was taken on November 23, 2022, shortly before another earthquake in northwestern Türkiye. Some scientists believe that these flashes of light are electrical charges released from certain rock crystals during seismic activity. According to another version, the glow is explained by the so-called piezoelectric effect, in which quartz-bearing rocks create a strong electric field with a certain type of compression. In any case, the video has nothing to do with the events of early February.

According to some estimates, more than 6,000 buildings collapsed due to the earthquake in Türkiye and Syria. However, not all images of destroyed houses posted on social media are related to the earthquake. For example, this TikTok video of buildings collapsing with the caption “Now in Türkiye” is actually a compilation of several videos of building demolitions in China in 2021.

Another video of an alleged collapse of a high-rise building in Türkiye was widely circulated on VKontakte. In fact, the video was filmed in 2021 in Florida.

A video of another collapsing building was published on VKontakte in the public Avia.pro and even got into the reports of some foreign media about the recent earthquake. In fact, this building was located in the city of Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. The reason for its destruction is not known for certain; it may have been a planned demolition.

Another video from VKontakte was filmed not in Türkiye, as the caption claims, but in Japan in 2016. Then, due to strong winds, scaffolding collapsed from a 9-story building.

Several viral photos purporting to show earthquake victims in Türkiye and Syria have also turned out to be unreliable. For example, the photo of a dog next to its owner stuck under the rubble, which went viral on Telegram, TikTok and VKontakte, was uploaded to Shutterstock at least three years ago.

Some Russian-language publications wrote that before the earthquake in Syria, hundreds of cats ran out into the street and “tried to leave the city,” citing video as evidence. And while unusually behaving animals can indeed sometimes serve as harbingers of earthquakes, this video was actually filmed in Saudi Arabia in 2022: the cats did not “try to leave the city” and did not “behave strangely”, but only went out to meet a passerby who came to them feed.

Thus, many viral photos and videos allegedly taken at the site of the earthquake in Türkiye and Syria, in fact, are not related to the disaster on February 6, 2023. Either unknowingly or consciously, in pursuit of “likes,” users share impressive footage from other countries of the world, passing them off as recent footage from Türkiye and Syria. The most common way to identify false information is by using a reverse image search, which helps to determine the original date or location of the shooting.