What was claimed
A video shows a tsunami in Turkey caused by the 2023 earthquake.
Our verdict
False. The video was filmed in Durban, South Africa, in 2017.
Viral video does not show tsunami in Turkey following 2023 earthquake
7 February 2023
A video posted on Facebook, which seems to claim to show a tsunami in the wake of the 6 February 2023 earthquake in Turkey, was actually filmed in South Africa six years ago.
The post, which appears on a Facebook page named Turkey Earthquake 2023, is captioned: “Tsunami Dreadful Waves Forwarding”. At the time of writing it has been viewed more than 17,000 times.
However, Full Fact has traced the video back to an event which took place in Durban, South Africa. The video was posted to YouTube in March 2017 by a South African news website’s channel.
The location shown in the video matches satellite imagery of Durban’s North Beach from Google Maps.
According to a report in The Mirror from the time, the incident, which was referred to as a “mini-tsunami” was the result of a cyclone weather system off the coast of Madagascar.
In the wake of a strong earthquake affecting Turkey and Syria, several unverified images and videos have been shared on social media claiming to show the incident and its aftermath. Often during a crisis people share these posts in good faith, but it’s a good idea to check they’re real before resharing, and not share if you’re not sure.
For general help on what to look out for if you see footage shared, see our guide on how to spot misleading videos online.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because the video was filmed in South Africa in 2017, not Turkey in 2023.