Catastrophe Vs conflict: Turkey & Syria, one week on. Ukraine, nearly one year in

Photo by Nikolas Noonan on UnsplashTurkey’s president has called the earthquake that hit the southern part of his country and northwest Syria on February 6 “the disaster of the century”.

Edwin Nissen, a professor of seismology at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, has said the two quakes were among the top five or 10 largest continental quakes ever recorded.

An official of Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) has said the first 7.7 magnitude earthquake had the effect of releasing energy as powerful as 500 atomic bombs.

And Saskia Goes, professor of Geophysics at London’s Imperial College has said a second earthquake of almost the same size is very unusual. The second quake was not an aftershock; it was nearly as massive as the first.

The scale of destruction surpasses anything I have seen. It is worse than the Syrian city of Raqqa after months of being pounded by artillery and airstrikes 

– The Times, London, from Antakya, Turkey, February 11, 2023

Across…