Claims the Türkiye-Syria earthquake was a man-made attack are 'ludicrous'

^{By Renee Davidson}

The recent earthquake and its aftershocks that devastated parts of Türkiye and Syria have caused a spike in misinformation surrounding the events, including false claims that the natural disaster was a man-made, politically motivated attack.

For instance, just hours after the quake struck on February 6, a post on former US president Donald Trump’s social media platform, Truth Social, falsely claimed the earthquake was in fact not an earthquake, but a “systemic attack” on the Kurdish people. 

“According to a firsthand source I have in Istanbul, Turkey, this ‘earthquake’ is a systemic attack against Kurdish people, who are anti-Islam. This is an election year and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan does not want to lose power,” the user wrote. 

The post, which has been reshared on Facebook and Instagram, taps into longstanding tensions in Türkiye, with the Kurdish people representing the largest ethnic minority group. For almost four decades, a Kurdish separatist group has waged an insurgency against Turkish authorities, including Turkish President Erdoğan. 

According to the post, the cities most affected by the earthquake and aftershocks were those of major Kurdish areas.  

Other social media users have revived an old conspiracy theory that alleges a former US military research program known as “HAARP” was used to artificially induce the earthquake. 

One Facebook user wrote: “The #HAARP technology exist [sic] to artificially induce earthquakes. This is another HAARP attack, similar to the one which was waged on Haiti, prior the [sic] Earthquake which killed 250, 000 Haitians on January 12, 2010.” 

An image accompanying the post shows the destruction in Türkiye and Syria, as well as Haiti. The text overlayed on the image reads: “both artificial man-made quakes caused by U.S. military.” 

Variations of the claim feature in hundreds of posts on social media, with many claiming the United States or NATO created the earthquake using “HAARP technology” in retaliation for Turkey’s recent position on NATO. 

For example, a video shared on Instagram features a montage of tweets, with one claiming: “No such thing as COINCIDENCE. Turkey rejected a NATO expansion a week ago, and now faces a massive earthquake. HAARP.”

But the claims are false. Seismology and physics experts consulted by RMIT FactLab rejected the claim that the earthquake was man-made or that HAARP had caused the natural disaster.

Dr Januka Attanayake, a research fellow in earthquake seismology, geography, earth and atmospheric sciences at the University of Melbourne, told RMIT FactLab that the earthquake occurred naturally along a well known fault line. 

“Natural tectonic movement along the East Anatolian fault caused the magnitude 7.8 earthquake and its aftershocks,” he said. 

“The knowledge of the presence of the fault is not new,” he said. “Researchers have been discussing various aspects of the fault for at least 40 - 50 years.”

Dr Attanayake said the sheer amount of energy released by the earthquake, as well as the energy required to fracture the rocks along the fault line, indicate it was a natural event and not man-made.  

An average of 32 peta joules (PJ) of energy is released by a magnitude 7.8 earthquake, he said. 

“Add to that the energy needed to fracture the rock and you are looking at a total energy budget of about 620,000 PJ,” he said. 

For perspective, he said the state of Victoria used 1136.2 PJ of energy between 2020 and 2021. “If this usage is held constant, the total energy budget of the main earthquake in Turkey is large enough to power the state of Victoria for 545.6 years. It is not possible to set off a man-made energy source this big.”

He said while some man-made activity is known to trigger earthquakes, such as wastewater injections along fault lines, those types of earthquakes typically would not reach magnitudes above 4. 

“No such activity took place around the East Anatolian fault and the sheer size of the event in Turkey clearly indicates that it is a natural event and is not man-made,” he said.

In regard to claims about HAARP, Dr Attanayake emphasised that it is a “research program”, not a form of “technology”, as alleged in the social media posts. 

HAARP — the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program — is a US research project that uses radio waves to study the ionosphere (Earth's upper atmosphere). In 2015, operation of the research facility was transferred from the US Air Force to the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. 

“It [HAARP] has instruments for monitoring the ionosphere and there is no obvious link between HAARP and solid earth processes, let alone earthquakes. Linking the two is utter misinformation,” Dr Attanayake said.

Professor Iver Cairns, of the School of Physics at the University of Sydney, also dismissed the claims that the earthquake was man-made or artificially induced using HAARP. 

“HAARP involves sending radio waves into the ionosphere, which do not couple well to rocks and water,” he said.

This is because radio signals typically bounce off water and the water and conducting materials in rocks tend to reflect and refract them, he said.

“HAARP's maximum power level is about 3.5 MW, so it would have to run continuously for over 300 years to provide the energy released in the earthquake. So it is ludicrous to suggest that HAARP could cause this earthquake, or any other,” he said.

Similar claims about the earthquake in Türkiye and Syria being man-made or caused by HAARP have been fact checked by USA Today, PoliticFact and Reuters and found to be false.