Turkey-Syria Earthquake Explained

CORRECTION NOTE: The capital of Turkey is Ankara, not Istanbul.

Turkey lies at the centre of three tectonic plates - Anatolian, Arabian and African. Arabia is moving northwards into Europe, causing the Anatolian plate (which Turkey sits on) to be pushed out westwards. The movement of the tectonic plates builds up pressure on fault zones at their boundaries. Faults are cracks in the earth's crust along which there is movement. These can be massive (the boundaries between the tectonic plates themselves) or very small. It is the sudden release of this pressure that causes earthquakes and ground shaking.The Turkey earthquake is likely to have happened on one of the major faults-the East Anatolian fault or the Dead Sea Transform fault.

Earthquake energy is actually caused by movement along an area of a fault. The bigger the earthquake the larger the fault area that will have moved. For 7.8 magnitude, there is likely to have been movement over an area roughly 190 km long and 25 km wide. This means the shaking will be felt over a very large area. Light shaking was felt by about 610,000 people as far away as the Turkish capital of Istanbul (around 815 km away), as well as Baghdad in Iraq (800 km) and Cairo in Egypt (950 km).

After major earthquakes there will be many smaller earthquakes known as aftershocks as the crust readjusts to the changes in stress. In the first 12 hours after the initial tremor in southeast Turkey there were already three other earthquakes above magnitude 6.0.

A magnitude 7.5 aftershock occurred further to the north on a different but adjacent fault system: the Sürgü Fault which was powerful enough to count as a separate earthquake in its own right.

While aftershocks are usually significantly smaller than the main shock, they can have equally devastating consequences, further damaging infrastructure that was damaged by the first earthquake and hampering rescue efforts.

[FranckLarsen]

This 2, 5 minute video was exactly the exact knowledge I was searching for.

[be_tonak]

1:33 turkish capital city is not istanbul, its ankara

[xtreat]

finally a video with proper explanation...

[CharlieApples]

Thank you for the excellent explanation. 👍

[zeyna]

Short and explanatory👍Turkey's capital is Ankara!

[sma]

Whilst I agree root cause is down to strike slip fault movements, Please note that the earthquake itself happens due to seismic wave propagation from hypocentre once the initial shock movement has occurred.

Tectonic plates are in constant motion but often get locked due to irregularities along the fault plane. Build up in stress is released once the resistance threshold is met resulting in seismic wave propagation. Once these waves reach the surface - They manifest as shaking or what we call as an earthquake.

[Whowhatwherewhy]

The North Anatolian Fault (NAF) is an active right-lateral strike-slip fault in northern Anatolia

[selatinsofta]

The explanation is good but Ankara is the capital city of Turkiye, not Istanbul.

[thetimetraveler]

Lebanon was also hit by the earthquake by a 4.5 earthquake from it

[peterjohnlesterj.macanas]

Update: as of February 9, 2023 the casualties from this disaster rise up to 17, 000

[airzahirakhan]

Elucidated as always
Shukriya Down to Earth

[kobrien]

Today a geologist said the earthquakes have been on 2 separate faults.

[AnkitaMalviya]

i am worried about people in car at 1:51😞

[arjunam]

01:33 Ankara is Turkish capital not Istanbul

[getit]

Death toll reached 25000 😭😭😭
God please save small children's 🙏

[raiasimzaman]

Why is it called turkey, syria eartquake. Even it happened in turkey.
Plz explain..

[faressaleh]

Well Turkey's capital city is Ankara not Istanbul

[eloyermarian]

Turkey’sbcapital is Ankara, not Istanbul

[Max_ulolo]

Soooo, does this channel only copies contents blatantly from The Conversation editorials regularly without giving an credit or this was a one time affair?

[sth]

You still don't know the capital city of Türkiye