Turkey is, due to its geographical position, an area of high seismic activity. Most of the country lies on the Anatolian plate, trapped between several plates that can exert pressure from different fronts and, therefore, cause large earthquakes such as those that occurred on Monday.
In 2022 alone, Turkey recorded more than 20,000 earthquakes. Of these, nearly 130 exceeded magnitude 4 on the Richter scale, while one exceeded level 6, according to data from the national emergency agency (AFAD) collected by Turkish media.
In fact, the authorities are striving to instill in the public prevention tips in case of tremors, assuming that they are inevitable from time to time. The country organized in November 2022 and for the first time a nationwide earthquake drill that spread simultaneously across 81 provinces.
As a result, the need to be prepared and know how to react in the event of an emergency is instilled in children from an early age. 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, which in turn is located between two large platforms, the Eurasian and African, and a third smaller plate, the Arabian. This causes several faults to run through the country, thus favoring the possibility of large earthquakes.
The most dangerous one, where the Turkish and Eurasian plates coincide, runs through the whole of northern Turkey, passing very close to Istanbul. In fact, the recurring fear of experts is that this large Turkish city may again suffer a potentially devastating earthquake at some point.
In fact, Istanbul has already recorded in 1999 about a thousand deaths 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 nearly 33,000 people were killed and 100,000 injured by an earthquake in Erzincan (east).
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
