Kirk here with some thoughts about how big the 2016 Kumamoto earthquake was and how it compares to the disaster in Turkey and Syria. The first thing to know is that magnitude is how scientists compare the size (energy release) of an event but that even with the same magnitude a number of factors can affect the intensity of the shaking that hits you in your particular location. Here's a nice succinct explanation I found on the web:

--- start quote ---
Magnitude is the most common measure of an earthquake's size. It is a measure of the size of the earthquake source and is the same number no matter where you are or what the shaking feels like. < some text omitted > Intensity is a measure of the shaking and damage caused by the earthquake; this value changes from location to location.
--- end quote ----
https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/how-are-earthquakes-recorded-how-are-earthquakes-measured-how-magnitude-earthquake-determined#:~:text=The%20Richter%20scale%20measures%20the,for%20research%20and%20comparison%20purposes.

OK, so how does the 2016 Kumamoto earthquake compare with what happened in Turkey/Syria? First let's look at magnitude:

Kumamoto: 7.0
Turkey/Syria: 7.8

0.8 may not seem like that much of a different but magnitude is a logarithmic scale where one point on the scale is 10 times greater that the point below it. That means that the size of the quake in Turkey/Syria was eight times (!) what occurred here.

Now, for intensity. Japan has "shindo," it's own intensity scale, but that's not used outside of Japan so it's not very helpful for comparison. There is another intensity scale that we can look at: the modified Mercalli intensity scale.

Kumamoto: 8.8 (maximum)
Turkey/Syria: 11 (maximum)

Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Kumamoto_earthquakes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Turkey%E2%80%93Syria_earthquake
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modified_Mercalli_intensity_scale

（Note: I have my doubts about the 8.8 assessment for Kumamoto. Based on what I know about what happened and the description of the levels in the Mercalli scale I would say that maximum in Kumamoto (in Mashiki) was closer to 10 than to 8.8 on that scale.）

At any rate, no matter how you slice it, we can see that the people of Turkey and Syria got hit very, very hard indeed. This not, of course, to minimize the very significant damage that occurred here -- just to provide a comparative perspective.

By the way, if you are interested in donating money to help the people of Turkey and Syria, there's some information here:
https://www.facebook.com/Kumamotoi/posts/pfbid02E7Y2TTyH2YJat8UqtbZVWeSsRP7DWxRQmdenPQrgPD9xjYpodPUZFMaBwCY9KXRTl

https://twitter.com/phivolcs_dost/status/1392324619453964296