People were sleeping in their mud-brick houses when the 6.0-magnitude quake struck at 4:32 am local time (0232 GMT) in a sparsely-populated area of high steppe in Eastern Anatolia.
“There was a lot of fear and panic among the people. It lasted about a minute,” Nursel Sengezer, a Dogan News Agency correspondent in Elazig province, told broadcaster CNN Turk.
“We felt it very strongly and everyone tried to get out onto the street.”
Turkey is criss-crossed with faultlines and frequently suffers earthquakes. A large earthquake measuring 7.4 killed about 18,000 people in August 1999.
Yesterday, families huddled in the open around fires lit to keep them warm, as the ground shook with more than 40 aftershocks, the largest of which had a magnitude of 5.5.
The quake toppled the minarets of three mosques in stricken villages in the Basyurt region of Elazig, according to provincial governor Muammer Erol.
Television images from the area showed women crying and embracing amid the ruins of their one-storey houses, and cars and ambulances ferrying injured to a hospital in the nearby town of Kovancilar.
“I ask my citizens in the region not to go into damaged houses because earthquakes and aftershocks are continuing,” Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan told a meeting of his AK Party.
Erdogan lamented the loss of life due to the vulnerability of the traditional mud-brick village homes, and pledged to rebuild houses using stronger materials.
