Video of building collapse in Turkey shows demolition, not earthquake
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on November 8, 2023 at 04:42
- 4 min read
- By Jan Cuyco, AFP Philippines
Copyright © AFP 2017-2025. Any commercial use of this content requires a subscription. Click here to find out more.
"Earthquake in Turkey. The way God shows anger towards people is truly something else," reads Tagalog text overlaid on a Facebook reel posted on October 19.
The reel, which has racked up more than 330,000 views, shows a nine-storey building crashing to the ground. Another building partially seen to the left of the tower block remains standing and undamaged.
The clip was shared more than eight months after a 7.8-magnitude earthquake hit southeastern Turkey near the border with Syria, killing more than 50,000 people.
The February 6 disaster was the strongest quake recorded in Turkey since 1939, exposing the nation's poor construction standards that resulted in even newly-constructed buildings falling apart. Officials say more than 12,000 buildings -- some built six months ago -- were either destroyed or seriously damaged in Turkey.
Several stitches of the Facebook reel also surfaced here, here and here alongside the false claim.
The clip was also shared as part of video compilations on YouTube (here, here, here and here) by accounts that appeared to be based in Pakistan and India.
Viewed more than 6,000 times, the videos falsely claim the clip shows damage in the Palestinian territories during the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, which was triggered by an unprecedented attack on Israel launched by Hamas on October 7 from the Gaza Strip.
Israeli authorities said the attack killed more than 1,400 people, with at least 230 people taken hostage.
Thousands of civilians have been killed on both sides since the conflict began.
Demolition
A reverse image search on Google found the video in posts here and here shared on X, formerly Twitter, as early as March (archived links here and here).
The posts say the video was filmed at "Ebrar sitesi / M blok".
The Ebrar site is a 22-block housing settlement in Kahramanmaraş, Turkey.
An AFP photo shows vast swathes of the housing site reduced to rubble by the February 6 quake.
Further keyword searches on Google found news reports by Istanbul-based newspaper Daily Sabah and Turkish state-run media outlet Anadolu Agency about a controlled demolition at the site (archived links here and here).
Turkish site Aykiri published footage of the collapsing building circulating on social media on their website on March 18 (archived link).
The post says in Turkish: "The remaining heavily damaged blocks of the Ebrar site in Kahramanmaraş were demolished in a controlled manner. This is how the building was destroyed in seconds and was captured by onlookers."
Below is a screenshot comparison of the falsely shared clip (left) and the video published by Aykiri (right):
Turkish television channel TV100 also reported the Ebrar demolition on March 22, showing a panning shot of a yellow building (0:58 mark), and right across it a white building with a red "Piazza" sign and three traffic lights (1:28 mark) (archived link).
The yellow building shown in the TV100 report corresponds to the same building partially seen to the left of the tower block in the falsely shared clip.
Below is a screenshot comparison of the building partially shown in the misleading video (left) and the TV100 report (right):
AFP geolocated the spot in Kahramanmaraş where the video was filmed to an alley called 64004 near Haydar Aliyev Boulevard (archived link).
The same shops in the building can be seen pictured here on Google Street View. Right across it are the Piazza building and the three matching traffic lights (archived links here and here).
AFP debunked a wave of misinformation about the Turkey earthquake here, here and here.
Is there content that you would like AFP to fact-check? Get in touch.
Contact us
