Two powerful earthquakes in Turkey and Syria that occurred yesterday, February 6, 2023, not only killed thousands of people and destroyed their homes, but also damaged critical Internet infrastructure. This is indicated by a sharp drop in traffic in many regions of the country recorded by Cloudflare.
In Gaziantep Province in Turkey, which was most impacted by the earthquake, there is clear ongoing Internet traffic disruption. At 1000 UTC, traffic was 57% less than at the same time in the previous time. pic.twitter.com/PpkFa5qwQ9
— Cloudflare Radar (@CloudflareRadar) February 6, 2023
The Turkish city of Gaziantep is one of the hardest hit, with internet traffic tracker Cloudflare Radar finding traffic down 57% from the same period the previous week.
North of Gaziantep, in Kahramanmaras province, traffic fell by 94% after the second earthquake. A sharp drop in traffic is also observed in the provinces of Sanliurfa, Kilis, Hatay, Osmania, Adiyaman, Diyarbakir, Malatya, Mardin and Adana.
Telecom company Turkcell said it was sending mobile base stations, generators and mobile satellite communication stations to the affected areas, along with teams of specialists from nearby areas. State-owned Türk Telekom said it had also dispatched base stations and said a 105-member Türk Telekom search and rescue team had been deployed to the area.
Both companies made calls to mobiles and landlines free and set up Wi-Fi hotspots in the affected areas. However, operators urged citizens to use the phone only for emergency calls.
According to rumors, the Turkish government has rejected SpaceX’s offer to provide Starlink internet connection funds, which do not have a license in the country, saying that the available funds are sufficient.
According to Cloudflare, many regions of Turkey affected by the earthquake are already restoring Internet access and increasing traffic. In Syria, the situation is less clear. Due to the civil war that has been going on for the past 11 years, the Internet and other important infrastructure have long since collapsed.
Visualization of earthquakes for the last 15 years in one minute
Source: Datacenter Dynamics
