page_title: Geology of Turkey
section_title: Plate tectonics
hierarchical_section_title: Geology of Turkey / Geological History / Plate tectonics
caption_attribution_description: Geologic faults and tectonic plates in Turkey, with plate labels. The positions of the faults is based on the BBC map used in this article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8557286.stm
context_page_description: The geology of Turkey is the product of a wide variety of tectonic processes that have shaped Anatolia over millions of years, a process which continues today as evidenced by frequent earthquakes and occasional volcanic eruptions.
context_section_description: Except for a relatively small portion of its territory along the Syrian border that is a continuation of the Arabian Plate, Turkey geologically is part of the great Alpine belt that extends from the Atlantic Ocean to the Himalaya Mountains. This belt was formed during the Cenozoic Era (about 66 to 1.6 million years ago), as the Arabian, African, and Indian continental plates began to collide with the Eurasian Plate. This process is still at work today as the African Plate converges with the Eurasian Plate and the Anatolian Plate escapes towards the west and southwest along strike-slip faults. These are the North Anatolian Fault Zone, which forms the present day plate boundary of Eurasia near the Black Sea coast and, the East Anatolian Fault Zone, which forms part of the boundary of the North Arabian Plate in the southeast. As a result of this plate tectonics configuration, Turkey is one of the world's more active earthquake and volcanic regions.
  The Anatolian Plate, together with the Aegean-Peloponnesus block, is located near the centre of a very wide region, including the Arabian Plate with the adjacent Zagros Mountains and central Iran, that moves in a circulatory pattern at a relatively fast rate of 20 mm/yr.  The rate of this counter-clockwise motion increases near the Hellenic Trench system south of Turkey and decreases away from it (i.e. the Eurasian and African plates move at a rate of 5 mm/yr), resulting in internal deformations in several areas, including central and eastern Anatolia, south-western Aegean-Peloponnesus, Lesser Caucasus, and central Iran.  
  The dominant process in the region is the subduction of the African Plate beneath the Hellenic Trench, and the deformation in the entire African-Arabian-Eurasian collision zone is most likely driven by the slab roll-back of the subducting African Plate in the East Mediterranean. This process is further fuelled by slab-pull forces in the Makran Trench in the Gulf of Oman where the Arabian Plate is subducting under Eurasia.  A response to this tectonic maelstrom is the rifting in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden which will separate Arabia from Africa.
caption: plate tectonics in Turkey: there are geologic faults around the Anatolian Plate, the African Plate, the Arabian Plate, and the Eurasian Plate.
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