On February 6 and seven, the Southeast of Turkey and the Northwest of Syria have been hit by devastating earthquakes. Along with the principle tremor that reached a magnitude of seven.8 on the Richter scale, greater than 20 aftershocks with magnitudes between 5.0 and seven.5 had been registered within the earthquake-ravaged area round Gaziantep. Since Monday, the dying toll of the catastrophe has climbed to 17,000 in Turkey and neighboring Syria, in line with CNN.

The reason for the Turkey-Syria earthquake – and all different earthquakes – lies within the phenomenon of plate tectonics, i.e. the continental drift of the plates which make up the Earth’s mantle. As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz exhibits within the chart under, a number of such plates meet in Turkey, which considerably will increase the chance of significant earthquakes.

One can find extra infographics at Statista

Much more importantly, some plates in Turkey transfer convergently, i.e. they’re approaching one another, which additionally makes main earthquakes extra probably than in locations the place plates transfer aside. 

Extra particularly, the East Anatolian fault – alongside which this week’s earthquake occurred – is characterised by a convergent boundary with the African plate to the south and a remodel boundary of horizontal motion with the Eurasian plate to the north. This additional exemplifies how a lot seismic exercise is current within the area that has now been became a catastrophe zone.

Turkey lies on the Anatolian Plate, which is on the road of rigidity between the Arabian and Eurasian Plates. The African Plate, which contributed to the formation of the Alps 60 million years in the past by drifting north, additionally borders the Anatolian Plate.

Alongside the perimeters of the Pacific Plate runs the so-called Ring of Fireplace chargeable for a lot of the world’s volcanic exercise – one other place the place convergent plate boundaries exist. Different plates are the Australian, North American and South American plates. The strongest earthquakes in current historical past all befell alongside the Ring of Fireplace, which additionally consists of the well-known Mariana Trench, across the Pacific Plate. An earthquake with a magnitude of 9.5 was measured in Valdiva, Chile, in 1960. In 2004, an earthquake within the Indian Ocean off Sumatra reached a magnitude of 9.1 to 9.3 and in 2011 within the Japanese area of Tōhoku, an undersea earthquake with a magnitude of 9.1 and the following tsunami prompted widespread devastation and quite a few deaths.