| East Anatolian Fault | |
|---|---|
 The East Anatolian and neighbouring faults cover most of Turkey | |
| Location | Eastern and south-central Turkey |
| Country | Turkey |
| Tectonics | |
| Plate | Anatolian plate Arabian plate |
| Earthquakes | 1866, 1893, 1998, 2010, 2020, 2023 |
| Type | strike-slip, transform-type tectonic boundary |
The East Anatolian Fault (Turkish: Doğu Anadolu Fay Hattı) is a ~700 km long major strike-slip fault zone running from eastern to south-central Turkey. It forms the transform type tectonic boundary between the Anatolian sub-plate and the northward-moving Arabian plate.[1] The difference in the relative motions of the two plates is manifest in the left lateral motion along the fault. The East and North Anatolian faults together accommodate the westward motion of the Anatolian sub-plate as it is squeezed out by the ongoing collision between the Arabian plate and the Eurasian plate.[2][3]
The East Anatolian Fault runs in a northeasterly direction, starting from the Maraş triple junction at the northern end of the Dead Sea Transform, and ending at the Karlıova triple junction where it meets the North Anatolian Fault. Another 350 km (220 mi) strand of the fault exists north of the main strand known as the Sürgü–Misis Fault System.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
Güvercin22was invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ "Eastern Turkey IRIS Report". atlas.geo.cornell.edu.
- ^ Özalp, Selim; Kürçer, Akın; Özdemir, Ersin; Duman, Tamer Y. (2016). "The Bekten Fault: the palaeoseismic behaviour and kinematic characteristics of an intervening segment of the North Anatolian Fault Zone, Southern Marmara Region, Turkey". Geodinamica Acta. 28 (4): 347–362. Bibcode:2016GeoAc..28..347O. doi:10.1080/09853111.2016.1208524.
The Anatolian tectonic block (sub-plate) is being affected by converging plate movements that occur between the Arabian-African and Eurasian plates (e.g. Armijo, Meyer, Hubert, & Barka, Citation1999; Bozkurt, Citation2001; Jackson & McKenzie, Citation1984; Le Pichon, Chamot-Rooke, Lallemant, Noomen, & Veis, Citation1995; McKenzie, Citation1972, 1978; Şengör, Citation1979, 1980; Sengör, Görür, & Saroglu, Citation1985; Taymaz, Jackson, & McKenzie, Citation1991). As a result of this collision, the North Anatolian (NAF) and East Anatolian (EAF) transform faults have been formed. The Anatolian sub-plate is bounded to the north and east by these faults. The impingement started to move the sub-plate westward and resulted compression and uplifts near the Karlıova triple junction in the Eastern Anatolia. As a result of anti-clockwise rotational movement of the Anatolian sub-plate in a westward direction four different neotectonic regions have been formed namely: (1) East Anatolian compressional region, (2) North Anatolian region, (3) Central Anatolian 'ova' region and (4) West Anatolian extensional region (Sengör et al., Citation1985).