The continuing aftershocks — the consequences of the February earthquake in Turkey — are, according to Turkish experts, rather encouraging phenomena. They mean that the energy accumulated in the earth’s crust is gradually discharged. Their number will gradually decrease and in November will come to nothing. But what will happen next is the question.
As the director of the Kandilli Observatory, Professor Haluk Ozener, said, thousands of earthquakes have been registered in Turkey since February: “Only as of 03:00 on May 29, 28,990 earthquakes have been recorded.”
But all these underground tremors are not so destructive and are gradually disappearing, added his colleague, a member of the Faculty of Engineering and Geology of Hacettepe University Candan Hekceoglu. The conclusions are drawn as a result of a “simple regression analysis of Candilli’s data.” “There is a very strong exponential relationship between the day and the number of aftershocks. If this trend continues, the number of aftershocks is expected to decrease to 30 in September and 10 in November,” he said.
But what will happen next – and whether the predictions about “terrible earthquakes” will come true – is the question. We will remind you that forecasts of a “big earthquake” were sounded in Turkey as early as 2021 – then Professor Hvalun Ahmet Ercan, a well-known earthquake forecasting expert in Turkey, said that a “Great earthquake” would destroy Istanbul. “I predicted this catastrophe back in 2018. Because 2020, 2021, 2022, and even 2023 will be earthquake years in Turkey. One of the main sources of this is the shift of the tectonic plate, the fault of which runs through the territory of Turkey. And this movement accumulates gigantic energy, which is released in the form of earthquakes. “During the 1999 Heljuk earthquake, the energy equivalent to 132 atomic bombs was released, draining most of Marmara’s voltage. Later, an earthquake occurred in Duzhe. As a result, the tension of the earth’s crust in this region was removed,” the professor said. “Since then, 22 years have passed, and tensions have become critical again,” he said.
A catastrophic earthquake happened. However, not in Istanbul. On February 6, 2023, an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.4 occurred at 04:17 in the Pazardzhik district of Kahramanmarasha. It was followed almost immediately, at 04:26, by another 6.4-magnitude earthquake, the epicenter of which is located in the Nurdagh district of Gaziantep near the Turkish-Syrian border. Aftershocks were felt throughout Turkey, up to the resort provinces.