The Earth's crust is made up of interlocking but actually separate pieces called "plates".
These plates often try to move, but fail to do so due to the pressure of other parts touching each other.
But sometimes the pressure on one of these plates builds up and then this pressure rises to the surface as energy. This energy moves the surface; that creates an earthquake.
In the last event, the Arabian plate moved to the north and put pressure on the Anatolian plate.
The thrust and pressure between these plates has caused serious tremors in the past.
On August 13, 1822, an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.4 occurred in the same region on the same fault line. 7 thousand people in Aleppo alone; In total, about 20,000 people died.
Why were the earthquakes so strong?
The East Anatolian Fault line is a “strike-slip” fault line. In this type of fault lines, blocks of hard rock put pressure on each other in a vertical line and eventually a block that cannot withstand the pressure moves horizontally. This creates such a tension that; earthquake occurs.
The San Andreas fault line in the state of California, USA, is one of the most well-known strike-slip fault lines in the world. It's been quiet for so long; It is predicted that a catastrophic earthquake may be very close.
In the Kahramanmaraş earthquake, this rupture occurred in a place that was not very deep.
"The closer an earthquake is to the surface, the greater the impact," says geophysicist David Rothery of the Open University in England.
The fact that the buildings were not durable enough was also effective in the death of many people.
Izmir Dokuz Eylul University (DEU) Earthquake Research and Application Center (DAUM) Director and Geological Engineering Department Lecturer Prof. Dr. Regarding the 7.4-magnitude earthquake that shook Turkey, Hasan Sözbilir said, "In the region of today's earthquake, parts of faults that have accumulated stress for 500 years have been broken. Since the earthquake generation interval of these faults is 400-500 years, an earthquake was expected on these faults in a scientific sense. The earthquake that occurred today, On the southern branches of the East Anatolian fault, the fault fragments between Malatya and Hatay were broken.