Italian scientists to visit Türkiye to examine devastating earthquakes

ROME

Italian scientists will arrive in Türkiye next week to examine samples from the devastating earthquakes, said a Turkish scientist living in Italy on Monday.

The latest earthquakes in southern Türkiye on Feb. 6 garnered great interest among Italian scientists, said Turkish scientist Aybike Akinci of the Italian National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV) in an exclusive interview she gave to Anadolu.

“It is because of the quake’s impact, the area it affected, and the size of the damage it caused,” she said, adding that the quake was the strongest after the one that hit eastern Erzincan province in 1939.

“The twin earthquakes in Türkiye are not the type of earthquakes we experience very often. It was an earthquake-triggering earthquake. It created two major earthquakes. One is 7.8, the other is 7 magnitude,” Akinci further said.

The Italian scientists will visit quake-stricken areas to examine and produce joint projects and solutions with their Turkish counterparts, she added.

On Feb. 6, magnitude 7.7 and 7.6 quakes struck numerous Turkish provinces, taking over 50,000 lives.

Around 14 million people in Türkiye have been affected by the quakes as well as many others in northern Syria.