Turkey Earthquakes
2 big faults in North Anatolia, South Anatolia and Aegean regions have turned Turkey into a land that is constantly and always afraid of the biggest earthquakes.
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The people of Turkey and Syria are still involved in the earthquake crisis. Murat Kurum, the Minister of Housing and Urban Development of Turkey, has announced that the turkeys earthquake that happened in the province of Kahramanmaras has affected the lives of 13 and a half million people of Turkey.
These were the words of Fatma Sahin, the mayor of Gaziantep, which terrified the public opinion and Turkish media.
She clearly and unconventionally announced that in one of the small cities of Gaziantep Province, which has a population of 60 thousand people, there is no information about the fate of at least 40 thousand of them. In the future, we will suddenly see an increase in the number of victims of the earthquake in Turkey.
The Wall Street Journal has announced that the 7.1 earthquake in Haiti in 2021 killed more than 2,000 people and destroyed more than 60,000 buildings. In 2018, more than 2,000 people died in a 7.5-magnitude earthquake in Indonesia.
In Nepal in 2015, more than 9,000 people lost their lives in a 7.8-magnitude earthquake. Although the initial predictions about Turkey’s casualties remained at 10,000 people, the words of the mayor of Gaziantep indicate that the death toll from the recent earthquake in Turkey may be much higher than the earthquakes mentioned by the Wall Street Journal.
According to the information available on the website of the Kandilli Observatory of Bogazici University in the metropolis of Istanbul, more than 190 aftershocks have occurred in the last 24 hours in Turkey and its surrounding areas, at least 150 of which occurred between Elazig and Hatay provinces on the North Anatolian fault line.
This is the well-known path that includes one of the 3 huge faults in Turkey, and Turkish geologists and seismologists have been afraid of it for years.
Pazarcik, Nurdag mountain in Kahramanmaras province, as the main focus of the recent earthquake, experienced 7.7 and 7.6 magnitude earthquakes. This area is one of the 3 main known fault lines, which are:
- North Anatolian fault
- Eastern Anatolian fault line
- Aegean fault
Of these 3 faults, the first two are in the east and south on the side of Iran and Syria, and the third is the Aegean fault in the west and in the vicinity of the coastal provinces of Istanbul, Kocaeli and Bursa.
As a sensitive province on the northern fault, the province of Kahramanmaras is actually an active earthquake-prone region that starts from the east of Turkey and extends to the south.
Since the beginning of the 20th century, a large number of earthquakes greater than 6 on the Richter scale have occurred in this region. This large fault, which is approximately 550 km long, starts from Hatay and continues through Kahramanmaras, Adiyaman, Malatya and Elazig to the mountainous and highland region of Bingol.
Finally, the North Anatolian fault line joins the “Karliova” or “Snow Plain” region, and its western end extends to the Western Mediterranean Rift. The provinces of this line are listed as earthquake-prone areas of level 1 in the earthquake risk map of Turkey that was implemented in 2019.
Hatay in central Turkey and Syria, Kahramanmaras and Osmaniye, which have been affected by recent earthquakes, are among the 24 cities with active fault lines on which the city is practically built, and which pass through the city center.
It was along this line that a large Turkey Earthquake occurred in Elazig on January 24, 2020. 41 people died and more than 1000 were injured in the 6.8 magnitude earthquake that occurred at that time.
Among the major earthquakes that have occurred in this line in the past 25 years, we can mention the 1998 Adana-Ceyhan, 2003 Bingol and 2010 Elazig Turkey earthquakes.
Director of the Center for Earthquake Research Applications of Dokuz Eylul University, Professor Dr. Hasan Süzbilir, said in a live interview on Habertürk TV: “The major earthquakes that occur in Turkey mainly occur on the North Anatolian and Eastern Anatolian fault lines.
Our research shows that two different faults have ruptured in two earthquakes in Kahramanmaras, which means that a huge energy discharge has occurred in the depths of this province. The rupture interval of the fractured fault in Kahramanmaras Hero is 500 years, and during this time considerable energy has been accumulated.
“No more major earthquakes are expected, we may experience other small aftershocks, but still, we should not enter damaged buildings.”
The head of the Kandilli Observatory of Bogazici University and the head of the Turkey Earthquake Research Institute, Professor Dr. Haluk Ozner, announced in a press conference: “After the Elazig earthquake in 2020, other earthquakes of different magnitude occurred in this line, and now we are witnessing a terrible earthquake, unfortunately.
This earthquake and similar earthquakes will occur in this geography, so we are developing our studies on how well we can be prepared and how we can reduce the risks. After the 4.2-magnitude earthquake that occurred in Osmaniye last week, various warnings were announced about the eastern fault line of Anatolia.
Prof. Dr. Naci Gurur, a member of the Turkish Academy of Geological Sciences, also said: “The last earthquake at the southwestern end of the Eastern Anatolian fault line was in Adana in 1998, and the 2020 Elazig earthquake also caused the fault leading to the Kahramanmaras mountain to continue. In this region, we are worried about the occurrence of an Turkey earthquake in the Çelikhan-Ergenek-Kahramanmaras line.
Following up on the news of the recent earthquake in Turkey, by the way, in 2020, the province of Kahramanmaras was selected as a pilot city by the “Management for Dealing with Unexpected Events” in the Ministry of Interior of Turkey, in the provincial disaster risk reduction project, and it was set to be a unit Rescue in this city.
At that time, in the presence of the Minister of Interior, Hayrettin Gungor, the mayor of Kahramanmaras, announced that the authorities had deliberately chosen a province that, according to them, was less at risk of Turkey earthquakes, and that the provincial earthquake management project in this province had complicated instructions. And it won’t be difficult, but now it has been proven that this province is one of the most dangerous provinces of the North Anatolian fault.
Fatih Altayli, one of the famous analysts and journalists of Turkey, has announced that based on the knowledge and detailed studies of Turkish scientists about the 3 huge faults of this country, there were clear predictions about the danger, but according to Altayli, the government to deal with the possible crisis And the building retrofitting plan has not done anything special and has preferred to limit its entire duties to collecting corpses.
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