Two earthquakes with magnitudes of 4.7 and 5.1 hit off the coast of Kuşadası, a resort town in Türkiye’s Aegean region on Wednesday. Tremors that continued for 14 minutes sent people to the streets in panic though no casualties were reported. The earthquakes were also felt in neighboring Izmir, Türkiye’s third largest province.
The Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) said in a statement that the first earthquake, which struck at 12:56 p.m. local time, took place some 30 kilometers (about 19 miles) off the coast of Kuşadası. The second earthquake, with a magnitude of 5.1, occurred some 18 kilometers off Kuşadası, at a depth of 7 kilometers. No damage was reported in either of the earthquakes.
Professor Hasan Sözbilir, director of the Earthquake Research Center of Izmir-based Dokuz Eylül University, told Demirören News Agency (DHA) that the earthquakes may have been triggered by a 2020 earthquake that hit Izmir. “There has been a significant accumulation of stress in the region after the Samos fault line broke on Oct. 30, 2020 and it affected fault lines near Kuşadası and Gümüldür areas,” he said. The 2020 earthquake, with a magnitude of 6.6, killed 117 people.
Izmir is at the heart of the Aegean region of Türkiye which stretches across the country's western shores. The region is an indented swathe of cities and towns where the eponymous sea cuts through the land that mountains face. Most settlements face countless islands, small and large, dotting the sea. The geography owes its current shape to earthquakes and shifts in tectonic plates. The wider region is located right in the center of the meeting point of three tectonic plates stretching to Africa, the Middle East and the Eurasian region. The Arabian and Eurasian plates collide to the east of the Aegean, in an area covering Izmir and other Turkish provinces. Their collision pushes the Anatolian plate further north toward the west, creating the potential for earthquakes.
Sözbilir said a fault line south of Samos and the Dilek peninsula on the Turkish side was breaking and it had the potential to generate a 6.6 magnitude earthquake. “In 2020, part of the fault line north of Samos was broken and now its southern part is broken,” he said.
Sitting on multiple active fault lines, Türkiye went through a shaky period in 2021, experiencing an average of three earthquakes an hour. Given that the risk of more consequential earthquakes remains, the country strives to protect its buildings as a precaution in the event of the "big one." Statistics show that a total of 23,753 earthquakes were recorded over the course of last year. In other words, around 65 earthquakes ranging in magnitudes occurred in a day on average in the country. Earthquakes are monitored by the 1,143 seismic observation stations run AFAD across the country, though some universities also operate their own stations.
