Turkey, a country prone to earthquakes due to its location between tectonic plates

Latest Turkey and Syria earthquake news

6 Feb. (EUROPA PRESS) –

Turkey is, due to its geographical position, an area of ​​high seismic activity. Most of the country falls on the Anatolian plate, trapped between several that can exert pressure from various fronts and, therefore, cause large earthquakes like those that occurred this Monday.

In the year 2022 alone, Turkey recorded more than 20,000 earthquakes. Of them, almost 130 exceeded magnitude 4 on the Richter scale, while one exceeded level 6, according to data from the national emergency agency (AFAD) collected by the Turkish media.

In fact, the authorities strive to teach citizens prevention advice in the event of tremors, assuming that these are inevitable from time to time. The country organized in November 2022 and for the first time a nationwide earthquake drill that spread simultaneously through 81 provinces.

Thus, from childhood, children are instilled in the need to be prepared and know how to react in an emergency. It is also common to establish or detect ‘a priori’ safer areas in homes or workplaces, according to the newspaper ‘Daily Sabah’.

Most of Turkey is located on the Anatolian plate, located in turn between two large platforms, the Eurasian and the African, and a third smaller plate, the Arabian. This causes several faults to cross the country, thus favoring the possibility of large tremors.

The most dangerous, where the Turkish and Eurasian plates meet, runs through the entire north of Turkey, passing very close to Istanbul. In fact, the recurring fear among experts is that this large city in Turkey could suffer a potentially devastating earthquake again at some point.

In fact, Istanbul already registered around a thousand deaths in 1999 as a result of an earthquake that left more than 17,000 dead in different parts of the country. The deadliest earthquake of the last century in Turkey took place in 1939, when about 33,000 people died and 100,000 were injured by an earthquake in Erzincan (east).