Old unrelated videos shared as recent visuals of the earthquake in Turkey - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
February 7, 2023
In the context of a major earthquake that struck Turkey and parts of Syria on 06 February 2023 killing hundreds of people, a video of a collapsing building is being widely shared on social media claiming it shows the latest visuals of the earthquake in Turkey. Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
Update (07 February 2023):
A few other videos are being shared on social media claiming as the CCTV footage showing the terrifying moments during the earthquake in Turkey on 06 February 2023. Let’s check the veracity of the claims made in these posts.
Video 1:
This post claims that the video shows terrifying moments during the recent earthquake in Turkey. On reverse image search of the screenshots of the video, a video with similar visuals was found published by the ‘Syria Stream’ YouTube channel on 30 October 2020. This YouTube channel described it as the visuals showing the scary moments during the earthquake in Izmir, Turkey. So, it can be confirmed that the video shared in the post shows the visuals of the 2020 earthquake in Turkey and not the latest one.
Video 2:
Another video is also being shared on social media claiming it is the visuals of the earth trembling during the recent earthquake in Turkey. On reverse image search, a video with similar visuals was found in an article published by a news website in May 2022. This news article reported it as the terrifying moments captured from inside a car during the earthquake in Japan. A YouTube user published this video in 2019, mentioning it is the video taken on a Metropolitan Expressway during the 2011 earthquake in Japan. From all these pieces of evidence, it can be concluded that the video shared in the post is old and does not show recent visuals from Turkey.
Published (06 February 2023):
Claim: Visuals of a building collapsing in Turkey due to earthquake on 06 February 2023.
Fact: Visuals show a building that collapsed in Izmir, Turkey on 30 October 2020 when an earthquake of magnitude 7.0 struck Aegean Sea in October 2020. Hence the claim made in the post is MISLEADING.
A reverse image search of the viral video led us to the original video uploaded by ‘Guardian News’ YouTube channel on 30 October 2020. The title of the video reads- “Turkey earthquake footage captures moment building collapses in İzmir”. As per the media reports, a strong earthquake of magnitude 7.0 struck the city of Izmir on 30 October 2020.
Similarly, other clips shown in the viral video also belong to this 2020 earthquake in Turkey. They can be seen here.
To sum it up, old videos from the 2020 Turkey earthquake are being shared as recent visuals.