Apowerful 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit southern Turkey and northern Syria early Monday, toppling buildings and triggering a frantic search for survivors in the rubble in cities and towns across the area. At least 245 were killed and hundreds injured, and the toll was expected to rise.
The quake, felt as far away as Cairo, was centered north of the city of Gaziantep in an about 90 kilometers (60 miles) from the Syrian border.
According to Google Maps, Gaziantep is located approximately 11 hours away from the Aegean Sea region, and 12 hours from Marmara, where a massive earthquake was predicted in December 2022 by an earthquake expert, according to a Turkish pro-government daily.
Read: Powerful quake kills at least 600 people in Turkey, Syria
Another Dutch researcher Frank Hoogerbeets, who works for organisation Solar System Geometry Survey (SSGS) based in Netherlands had apparently predicted the quake on February 3, 2023, just three days ago.
Using his Twitter account Dutch expert Frank Hoogerbeets wrote, “Sooner or later there will be a ~M 7.5 earthquake in this region (South-Central Turkey, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon).”
Sooner or later there will be a ~M 7.5 #earthquake in this region (South-Central Turkey, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon). #deprem pic.twitter.com/6CcSnjJmCV
— Frank Hoogerbeets (@hogrbe) February 3, 2023
SSGS describes itself as a research institute for monitoring geometry between celestial bodies related to seismic activity on Twitter.
After Frank Hoogerbeets’ prediction went viral, he responded to the earthquake, saying, “As I stated earlier, sooner or later this would happen in this region, similar to the years 115 and 526. These earthquakes are always preceded by critical planetary geometry, as we had on 4-5 Feb."
And in another prediction, Serkan Içelli, an expert in mining geology, earth sciences, and earthquakes told media in December 2022 that a “big one," or a massive earthquake was expected for Turkey’s Marmara region, where the nation’s most populous metropolis, Istanbul, is situated, and would ‘probably shortly strike the Aegean region’.
Içelli had predicted that the significant earthquake would strike Istanbul and that the Aegean region would see a catastrophic quake.
However, he had stated that the intensity of the earthquake would not exceed over 7.0 on the Richter Scale as ‘the Gölcük earthquakes in 1963 and 1999 significantly reduced the amount of tension in Marmara.’ “Therefore, an earthquake of more than 5.8 to 6.2 in the Marmara Sea is not possible," he had told the daily.
“The Aegean region is a very complex place for us. Unfortunately, we do not follow that region very well. Especially the area under the island of Crete, called the Hellenic Arc, is dangerously prone to earthquakes. This region has previously produced earthquakes with a magnitude of 8.0 and is now causing the biggest earthquakes. In terms of our country, a tsunami may occur in parts of Muğla," he had explained.
“First of all, you need to know the annual sliding rate of that fracture, the earthquake repetition period and the largest earthquake it produced and analyze it with various formulas accordingly," he had told.
