What was claimed
CCTV video shows February 2023 earthquake in Turkey.
Our verdict
The video does appear to show an earthquake in Turkey, but it is from 2020, and does not show the current disaster.
Video claiming to be from this week’s earthquake in Turkey actually from 2020
7 February 2023
A video shared on Facebook on 7 February 2023 captioned “turkey earthquake today cctv footage” is actually from three years ago.
The post claims to show footage of the recent earthquake on 6 February 2023, which has killed at least 5,000 people in south-east Turkey and northern Syria.
The video has been shared across social media since, attracting millions of views on Twitter, including versions with captions dating it to February 2023.
However, the video was posted by the Iran-based Mehr News Agency on 31 October 2020, with the claim that it showed the Turkish city of Izmir, after it surfaced on Twitter the day before. The original source is unclear but the video clearly does not show the recent earthquake in Turkey.
On 30 October 2020 an earthquake measuring 6.9 on the Richter scale affected Turkey’s western Aegean coast and the Greek island of Samos. It killed 117 people in Turkey, including in Izmir, and two in Greece.
People often spread misinformation on social media after disasters and major world events, whether deliberately or in good faith. For example, we have written many fact checks on fake or misattributed videos relating to the ongoing war in Ukraine.
During these times it's worth checking that content is real before you share it. We have written a guide on how to verify viral videos.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because the video shown is not new. It is from an earthquake in Turkey in 2020.