Earthquakes are not uncommon in this part of the world. However, the one that happened on 6 February 2023 had a magnitude of 7.8 and was the deadliest and strongest recorded in Türkiye since 1939, and was the world’s deadliest since the 2010 Haiti earthquake.
The earthquake’s epicentre was 34 km west of the city of Gaziantep in southern Türkiye, near the northern border of Syria (see back page). Türkiye is vulnerable to earthquakes as it sits on the Anatolian plate, between the large tectonic plates of Eurasia, Arabia and Africa. Within the Anatolian tectonic plate there are two major faults — the North Anatolian fault and the East Anatolian fault, and it is on the latter that the 2023 earthquake occurred.
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