Fact Check: Did US military programme HARAP cause the Turkey earthquake

Since the earthquake devastated Turkey there have been multiple claims on the Internet about the reason for the same.

Was the earthquake in Turkey caused by a mysterious object that fell from the sky?

A conspiracy theory is now being discussed on the social media alongside a video of an illuminated object falling from the sky. It is being alleged that this vide was recorded in the Hatay province of Turkey.

"The mysterious fireball that fell just before the earthquake in Turkey," one user claimed on Twitter.

Others claimed that this video had something to do with the high-frequency active auroral research programme, which is a former US military programme. They claimed that the Turkey earthquake was caused by this programme.

OneIndia has learnt that these claims are false and has nothing to do with the US military programme.

A reverse search of the keyframes from the viral video found that it was shared on YouTube by USA Today on February 14. As per this video's description, it showed an asteroid that was spotted in the sky over Europe.

USA Today while sharing the video credited to a user called "@tymlaly76700". The user is a person called Kevin who lives in Le Havre, France. He had shared this video on February 13 and while replying to a question, he said that he shot the video by chance while trying to show a shooting star to children.

What is HARAP:

High-Frequency Active Auroral Research Programme (HARAP) is a research programme that was jointly funded by the US Air Force, US Navy and the University of Alaska Fairbanks. It was designed to study the ionosphere, a part of the Earth's upper atmosphere which is important for long-range communication and navigation.

The programme used an array of high-frequency antennas to transmit energy into the ionosphere to create a small region of plasma which could be studied by researchers. The programme was active between 1993 and 2013.

HARAP has been subject to numerous theories with some saying that it was a secret weapons capable of controlling earthquakes, or even mind control. However there is no evidence to suggest the same.