Overview of the geology of Turkey: modern tectonic setting
The continents of Europe and Asia meet in Turkey -- specifically, in Istanbul at the Bosphorus Strait -- and the Asian part of Turkey is called Anatolia.
Anatolia is also a tectonic plate. Plates are made of crust and the underlying upper mantle (together these are also known as the lithosphere) and they move in response to forces acting at the boundaries of the plate.
Satellite image of Turkey, showing the land boundaries of the country (red line), the major plate-bounding faults (white), and some other important faults (yellow). The pink arrows show the approximate direction of motion of the Arabian plate relative to Eurasia (at 15 millimeters per year), and the motion of Anatolia to the west at 21 millimeters per year.
In the case of the Anatolian plate, the crust is mostly continental crust, but it contains pieces of old oceanic crust, representing the ancient Tethyan Ocean that was consumed tens of millions of years ago as continents and fragments of continents (microcontinents) collided and created the modern Anatolian plate.
Today, the Anatolian plate is experiencing extension (pulling apart) on its western margin, where it meets the Aegean Sea, and it is experiencing convergence (compression) on its southeastern margin, where the Arabian plate is colliding with Anatolia (see arrows on the map above). The Anatolian plate is moving to the west, mostly as a large, rigid block.
The boundaries of the plate to the north and south(east) are major strike-slip faults that experience many earthquakes: the North Anatolian and East Anatolian Faults. (map) The North Anatolian fault has been compared to the San Andreas Fault in California: both are large strike-slip faults within continental crust and both are major seismic hazards for the people living near them because they both generate earthquakes of large magnitude.
This type of lateral motion of a plate is called tectonic escape. Anatolia is escaping to the west, perhaps in response to the collision of Arabia in the east.
Compared to most other tectonic plates, the Anatolian plate is very small. In fact, some (simplified) maps showing the tectonic plates of the world don't even distinguish it from the Eurasian plate, even though Anatolia is one of the most geologically active places in the world. For our research on the Anatolian plate, the small size and high level of activity are advantages because these allow us to study the plate margins and interior in one research project, and to observe many different types of recent and ongoing geological activity.
In the CD-CAT (Continental Dynamics : Central Anatolian Tectonics) project, we are studying how the Anatolian plate has moved and changed -- laterally and vertically, from the mantle below the Anatolian plate to the Earth's surface -- over the past ~65 million years, a period of time in Earth history known as the Cenozoic Era.
Click here for more non-technical information about CD-CAT.