On February 6, 2023, a catastrophic earthquake, estimated at magnitude 7.8, struck southeastern Turkey and northern Syria. The quake and its powerful aftershocks caused immense destruction, killing more than 50,000 people and devastating entire cities, including Gaziantep, Antakya, and Aleppo. The disaster was one of the worst in the region's modern history, exacerbating the suffering of populations already affected by the Syrian civil war. The event led to a massive international aid effort and raised profound questions about urban resilience, infrastructure, and the politics of disaster response in a war-torn area.

The 2023 Turkey-Syria earthquake has already begun to inspire a wave of contemporary Arabic, Turkish, and international poetry, as poets respond to the scale of the tragedy and the human stories of loss and survival. The event is likely to become a major theme in Middle Eastern literature, with writers exploring the intersection of natural disaster, war, and human suffering. Early poetic responses have focused on the themes of solidarity, grief, and the critique of political failures, continuing a long tradition of disaster poetry in the region that stretches back to medieval Arabic elegies for earthquake victims.