February 6, 2023

2023 Turkey–Syria earthquakes

The 6 February 2023 Türkiye–Syria earthquake doublet

The second shock was so large, and broke such a different fault system, that many seismologists refuse to call it an aftershock at all.

04:17 local time: about 85 seconds of rupture

At 01:17:34 UTC on 6 February 2023 — 04:17 local time, with many residents asleep — a shallow magnitude-7.8 earthquake ruptured part of the East Anatolian fault system in south-central Türkiye near the Syrian border. The rupture lasted roughly 85 seconds.

It began on a splay fault and cascaded across a complex network of East Anatolian segments. A magnitude-6.7 aftershock followed eleven minutes later.

Nine hours later, a second fault broke

At 10:24:48 UTC, about nine hours after the first shock, another major earthquake struck roughly 95 kilometres north near Ekinözü and Elbistan, rupturing the Sürgü–Çardak fault system.

USGS classifies that second event as the largest aftershock in the sequence and reports it as M7.5; AFAD reports the pair as 7.7 and 7.6, and some moment-tensor solutions give Mw7.7. The magnitude you see depends on the agency.

Because both events were main-shock-sized and broke distinct fault sections, many seismologists describe the disaster as an earthquake doublet rather than a main shock plus an aftershock.

Figures that get merged in the retelling

Deaths in both countries exceeded 59,000 — over 53,500 in Türkiye and about 5,900 in Syria on WHO's territorial summary — with more than 100,000 injured. These are cumulative totals established afterwards, not counts known by nightfall.

INSARAG's after-action review records approximately 11,320 international search-and-rescue personnel in 255 teams from 90 countries deployed to Türkiye, the largest such response in its history at that time.

Damage and recovery are separate measures: the World Bank put direct physical damage in Türkiye at US$34.2 billion and in Syria at US$5.1 billion, while the official TERRA assessment put Türkiye's recovery and reconstruction requirement at US$103.6 billion.

Sources

Researched 24 Aug 2026 7 sources not yet audited

How this was checked

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What the sources leave uncertain

Magnitude depends on the reporting agency and method. USGS gives M7.8 and M7.5; AFAD commonly reports 7.7 and 7.6; scholarly moment-tensor solutions sometimes describe the pair as Mw7.8 and Mw7.7.
USGS classifies the second event as the largest aftershock, but many seismologists call the pair an earthquake doublet because both were main-shock-sized and ruptured distinct fault sections.
Fatality estimates for Syria vary because the affected territory was divided among different authorities and many Syrians also died in Türkiye. WHO's territorial summary—about 5,900 deaths in Syria—is used here rather than the highest nationality-based estimates.