Meeting of faults (Image: KeystoneUSA-ZUMA/Rex Features)

An earthquake of magnitude 7.2 struck Turkey yesterday, killing more than 200 people and injuring thousands.

Turkey is one of the most quake-prone countries in the world. Most of it lies on the Anatolian plate, a small wedge-shaped tectonic plate that is being squeezed westwards as the Arabian plate to the east slams into the Eurasian plate.

Many of Turkey’s most severe quakes occur on one of the two faults that flank the Anatolian plate – the north and the east Anatolian faults. Between 1939 and 1999 Turkey’s major earthquakes were marching westward along the north Anatolian fault, prompting fears that Istanbul – which lies near the fault – would eventually shake. In 1999 a magnitude-7.6 quake struck near Izmit, just 70 kilometres from Istanbul, killing around 17,000 people.


Since 2003, however, activity has shifted to the east Anatolian fault. In that year more than 100 people died after a quake near the city of Bingöl. The east fault slipped again last year, and the resulting 6.1-magnitude quake killed 51.

According to the US Geological Survey, yesterday’s earthquake hit at 1.41 pm local time (1041 GMT) at a depth of 20 kilometres. Its epicentre was 16 kilometres north-east of Van in eastern Turkey, which places it near the junction of the two Anatolian faults. Here, tectonic activity is dominated by the Bitlis suture zone – a broad zone of compression caused by the collision of the Arabian and Eurasian plates.

“Since yesterday’s quake is in the junction it’s hard to know which fault was responsible,” says Kevin McCue, director of the Australian Seismological Centre in Canberra. However, the USGS is now reporting that the style of tectonic activity is consistent with compressional activity within the Bitlis suture zone.