Original article (in Bosnian) was published on 09/02/2023
Conspiracy theorists claim that the earthquakes in which thousands of people died in Turkey and Syria are actually “revenge” carried out by the NATO alliance because Turkey decided to leave it. Such claims are complete nonsense.
On February 6, 2023, a screenshot of a Twitter post in English from the profile Shadow of Ezra was published on Facebook.
Look at the publication date !!!!
A week ago, Ezra Cohen warned that NATO would launch a false flag attack on Turkey. Therefore, today’s earthquakes are confirmed to be the work of a seismic weapon known as HAARP. That would be revenge because Turkey is leaving NATO.
The tweet stated the following: “Turkey expects a false flag from those who have power in NATO”.
By the time of writing this analysis, we found ten more Facebook, Twitter and Telegram posts featuring the same claims.
What are the facts?
In the early morning hours of February 6, 2023, a series of earthquakes hit Turkey. The first earthquake of magnitude 7.8 on the Richter scale occurred near the city of Gaziantep in Turkey. A series of subsequent earthquakes followed, one of which was of magnitude 7.5. These earthquakes also destroyed part of neighbouring Syria. By the time of writing this analysis, the number of victims exceeded 9,000.
This tragedy very quickly served the users of social networks as an inspiration for various conspiracy theories. Raskrinkavanje has already written about the claims suggesting it is not a natural disaster, but the “destruction of the ‘deep state’”.
What is a “false flag attack”?
In the mentioned posts, it is claimed that “Ezra Cohen warned that NATO will launch a false flag attack on Turkey”. In the post, the term “false flag” is used in English. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, this term refers to “a hostile or harmful action (such as an attack) that is designed to look like it was perpetrated by someone other than the person or group responsible for it”. The clumsy translation used in the posts in our language states that it is a “false flag attack”.
This claim was originally published on the Shadow of Ezra Twitter account on January 30, 2023. The same account previously published claims about operations for which others are blamed, which are allegedly being prepared in 2023 (1, 2). In domestic publications, it is suggested that these claims were published by Ezra Cohen. However, the Twitter account where the claims were published does not state that the account belongs to a person with that name and surname. The account was created in December 2022 and until the time of writing this analysis, there were no posts on it that would indicate who is behind it.
Ezra Cohen, to whom the publications in our language may be attributed, is the former deputy secretary of defence for intelligence and security in the United States of America. He does, however, have his own official Twitter account and there is no evidence that he is behind the Shadow of Ezra account. Adherents of the QAnon movement, a fictitious narrative that claims the world is run by a secret “cabal”, believed that Cohen was their leader and founder. Namely, according to the premise of this conspiracy theory, a high-ranking military officer with access to secret information from a circle close to former US President Donald Trump “discovers” and works to prevent the alleged crimes of the “cabal”. On several occasions, Raskrinkavanje has written about those unfounded claims from the QAnon narrative (1, 2, 3, 4).
Cohen was often referred to as Q within the framework of this conspiracy theory, although he completely rejected this narrative. Those who believe in the QAnon narrative, thus, attributing various claims or predictions to Cohen, actually claim that they are part of the QAnon belief and that they came from the very top of its “hierarchy”.
Are these earthquakes “the work of a seismic weapon known as HAARP”?
Earthquakes are intense shaking of the Earth’s surface, according to the NASA Space website. The shaking is caused by the movement of the Earth’s crust. Planet Earth consists of several layers, and the solid layer and its crust are called the lithosphere. The lithosphere is not uniform but is composed of interrupted tectonic plates. The tectonic plates are constantly moving, and sudden movements at the dividing lines of the tectonic plates cause earthquakes.
It is, therefore, a completely natural phenomenon. Earthquakes of varying magnitudes occur every day around the world. Some, like the recent ones that hit Turkey and Syria, are more powerful and destructive than others, while some are barely felt.
In February, Raskrinkavanje has written about the unfounded claims that HAARP causes earthquakes in the analysis titled “HAARP exists – but it is not a secret weapon that causes earthquakes and disasters”, which you can read here. As detailed in this analysis, HAARP (High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program) is described on the official website as “the most capable high-power high-frequency (HF) transmitter in the world for studying the ionosphere”. This program cannot change time because, as stated in the “Frequently Asked Questions” section of the aforementioned page, “radio waves in the frequency ranges transmitted by HAARP are not absorbed in either the troposphere or stratosphere – the two layers of the atmosphere that produce Earth’s time. Since there is no interaction, there is no way to control the time. The HAARP system is basically a large radio transmitter”.
Therefore, HAARP does not affect the weather. As the fact-checking platform Climate Feedback also points out, HAARP cannot cause earthquakes or other similar natural disasters.
Is Turkey leaving NATO and is this alliance getting “revenge” for it?
The claim from the aforementioned posts that the tragedy in Turkey is NATO’s “revenge” because this country wants to leave the alliance is unfounded on several levels. Primarily, as explained, the earthquakes that hit Turkey are a completely natural phenomenon and not any kind of “revenge”. Additionally, Turkey has not made any official decision to leave the NATO alliance.
Namely, businessman and politician from Turkey Ethem Sancak said on January 25, 2023, that Turkey “will leave NATO in the next 5-6 months”. Sancak is the vice president of the Patriotic Party (Vatan Partisi) in Turkey, which is not in power in this country. There is no information that Turkey has officially announced such a decision.
At the end of January 2023, Turkey refused to ratify the candidacy of Finland and Sweden for membership in the NATO alliance, and later the President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said that the country could accept the membership of Finland, but not Sweden. The primary reason for blocking Sweden’s membership is the country’s refusal to extradite dozens of suspects linked to banned Kurdish fighters and the failed coup attempt in 2016.
However, this does not mean that Turkey is leaving the NATO alliance or that NATO is getting “revenge”. Numerous NATO member states, according to the Alliance’s official website, offered and sent aid to Turkey after the earthquake.
Given all the facts, we assess the first publication of the claim, suggesting that the earthquakes in Turkey are the result of HAARP and the revenge of the NATO alliance against Turkey, as fake news and a conspiracy theory. Other posts of the same claim are rated as the distribution of fake news and conspiracy theories.
