The earthquake in Turkey and Syria was caused by the American program HAARP? Another conspiracy theory

Polish Internet users discuss the causes of the recent earthquakes in Turkey and Syria – spreading untrue theses. Among them is a theory about the American research program HAARP. “Turkey officially accuses the US of causing the earthquake by using Haarp in the area. They say that no electromagnetic discharges during earthquakes like this one have ever been observed in history” – February 10 he wrote anonymous Internet user on the profile called Ministry of Truth (original spelling of all entries). Previously, this account had published misleading information that it verified Concrete24 and service Demagogue.

The post was accompanied by a 22-second video, which was supposed to be related to the earthquake in Turkey and Syria on February 6. These are probably CCTV footage. We can see the lights of the city at night. The night sky is suddenly illuminated by a flash, and in the next shot, much closer to the camera, a series of several smaller short bursts can be seen. In the upper right corner there is still the logo of the Turkish news television Haber Global. The following shots also feature the markings of the Turkish news agencies: IHA (Ihlas News Agency) and DHA (Demirören Haber Ajansı). The bar at the bottom of the screen reads in Turkish: “A ray of light during an earthquake”. In the background, a woman’s voice is heard, probably belonging to a TV presenter, commenting on the material being shown. The tweet was viewed almost 34,000 times. times, and the recording itself 15 thousand. The tweet was liked by over 500 users and shared by almost 190.

Some shots show the date – November 23, 2022, which was noticed by Internet users. “The date on the screen is 23.11.2022. Upper right corner” – in response to this comment, the anonymous author of the entry argued: “Often found on surveillance videos that the time is not set after the reset. The Turks claim that they have thousands of lightning witnesses.”

“Social media is buzzing about it,” he added in a follow-up post, and included a link to an article from the English-language website Geo.tv entitled “HAARP: Was the earthquake in Turkey caused by the United States?” of February 8, 2023.

“And how do they know it’s not Russia or China???”; “Turkey, as always, plays its own game to get as much as possible. There are elections in May and you would have to look like they are independent from the US. In the Arab world, the US is the biggest enemy, but they are still pulling out $”; “Turkey didn’t sign sanctions against Russia, neither did Syria, so they make an earthquake”; “I work with a turk and I sent it to him to say what they say. He didn’t say they were saying anything about the US but they were actually surprised by the discharges at the exact time the quake happened. When I told him people were writing about the US using HAARP he confirmed this that in Istanbul,” Twitter users commented on the entry and the recording.

Many asked for the source of information about the alleged US accusation by Turkey of causing the earthquake. “May I have the official Turkish source for the accusation?”; “where is the official accusation?”; “‘Official’. Where is the official source?”; “Source it official”; “I’d like a link to the official statement”; “Show some official Turkish sources,” they commented.

The quoted post is misleading and the accompanying video has been taken out of its original context.

The recording from the popular tweet has nothing to do with the February 2023 earthquakes. In the upper corners of the screen, you can see at several moments that the material is dated November 23, 2022. On that day in the morning there was an earthquake in the province of Düzce in western Turkey. At that time, Turkish, English-speaking and Polish media, among others, informed about the earthquake. TVN Meteo.

The material popular today is an excerpt from the main news of the Turkish news station Haber Global. A longer fragment of the release is available on the station’s official YouTube channel. It was published on November 23, 2022 and entitled “Blood-chilling image in Düzce! This is what the sky looked like during the earthquake.” The surveillance camera was located in one of the industrial plants in Düzka.

The surveillance video has been available online since November last year and was clarified by experts. For the Turkish editorial office “MillietteProf. Ali Pınar, deputy director of the Kandilli Seismic Observatory in Istanbul, explained the phenomenon. “The release of such seismic energy is usually caused by fault movement. The movement of the faults releases a lot of heat. Similarly with the earthquake yesterday morning, there was an afterglow in the region. The reason of this [zjawiska] is closely related to the faults. The following points are also worth mentioning. 90 percent of the seismic energy stored on a fault is completely released by heat. Only the remaining 10 percent is released by seismic energy. (…) Hi [energii]what we see as light is the 90 percent,” he said of the explosion of light in the sky during the Düzce earthquake.

He added that a similar event was observed not only during the November 2022 earthquake, but also during the earthquake in the city of Izmit in northwestern Turkey in August 1999. Flares were then reported by residents.

After two months, the video became popular again in the context of the recent earthquake in Turkey and Syria. Turkish fact-checking editorial office teyit.org recently explained the context of the recording.

An anonymous Twitter user argues that “Turkey officially accuses the US of causing the earthquake by using Haarp in the area.” We have not been able to confirm this information in Turkish and English-language reliable sources.

There is also no evidence supporting the thesis that HAARP caused the earthquake in Turkey and Syria. HAARP, or High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program, is an American one research facility conducted in Alaska since 1993 by the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. It has 180 antennas and 360 radio transmitters, which are used by scientists to study the ionosphere.

The theory that HAARP caused the earthquake in Turkey and Syria has been clarified in recent days by fact-checking portals: Polish DemagogueTurkish Dogrulukpayi.com and Italian Facta.news. Theories about the alleged capabilities of the HAARP program are not new. In 2021, a French fact-checking portal The Observers described untrue claims that HAARP would cause extreme weather anomalies. In Turkey, claims were circulating as early as 2016 that the 1999 earthquakes triggered the United States and the HAARP program. Then they were refuted by the Turkish fact-checking editorial office Dogrulukpayi.com.

To conspiracy theories about the alleged possibilities of the HAARP program published on the site Gaia.comin an interview with the fact-checking editorial office climatefeedback.org Dr. Robert McCoy, director of the Institute of Geophysics at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks, commented. “Claims … of HAARP’s ability to cause natural disasters or control human behavior are false,” he said. He added that HAARP is a high-frequency transmitter that is basically a walkie-talkie. “It is used to conduct experiments on a 100-by-100-kilometre patch of the upper ionosphere. HAARP transmissions only cause minor effects in the ionosphere that last a few seconds. Moreover, the facility only operates for a few hours a year. The sum of high-frequency energy coming from amateur radio operators globally, it almost certainly outperforms HAARP transmissions. HAARP cannot affect any of the natural phenomena listed in the article, such as earthquakes and snowstorms, and there is no way it could affect or affect humans,” he continued.

“The earthquake was the result of the discharge of stresses created at the junction of the Arab and Anatolian Platforms on the East Anatolian Fault” – they stated in their analysis of February 6, researchers from the Polish Geological Institute.

The region of south-eastern Turkey and north-western Syria, hit by an earthquake in early February, is seismically active and tremors are frequent. Recall that the epicenter of the 7.8 magnitude earthquake that struck southeastern Turkey and northwestern Syria on Monday, February 6, was in the Turkish province of Kahramanmaras. Less than 12 hours later, a second 7.7-magnitude quake occurred several dozen kilometers to the north. Both phenomena were accompanied by a series of over one hundred aftershocks. As of February 13, the death toll exceeded 36,000.