Afet Dinamikleri ve Toplumsal Kırılganlık Açısından 23 Nisan 2025 İstanbul Depremine İlişkin İlk Gözlem ve Değerlendirmeler

The earthquake with a magnitude of 6.2 Mw that occurred off the coast of Silivri in the Marmara Sea on April 23, 2025, at 12:49 PM, drew attention not only for its physical impacts but also for the consequences it created at the societal and administrative levels. The eight seismic activities that occurred successively just before and after the main shock were intensely felt, particularly in Istanbul and the surrounding provinces. This situation triggered the perception of threat that had long been on the public agenda and led to the observation of extraordinary levels of panic behavior. Issues such as movement toward unsafe areas, disorder in intra-urban evacuations, the collapse of communication infrastructure, and disruptions in transportation systems clearly revealed the multilayered vulnerabilities of Istanbul. In the post-earthquake period, divergences of opinion among scientists increased information pollution, negatively affecting public trust, while the spread of unverified content on social media further heightened anxiety levels. This chain of events demonstrated that this earthquake experienced in Istanbul was not only an engineering challenge but also a serious stress test in psychosocial, administrative, and communicative terms. In this context, it is evident that resilience strategies to be developed against disasters should not be limited to physical infrastructure alone; they should also be addressed in a holistic manner through areas such as community participation, mental health support, crisis communication, and disaster literacy. It was clearly observed in this case that the components of such efforts focusing specifically on the moment of the disaster need to be strengthened. The restructuring of disaster management policies with an interdisciplinary approach emerges as a vital necessity for high-risk geographies such as Turkey.