On a Monday morning in 2023, Turkey was hit by two powerful earthquakes in quick succession.
The first, the worst to strike the country since the Erzincan quake of 1939, measured 7.8 on the Richter scale and struck near Gaziantep in the southeast of Turkey, killing more than 1,300 people in the region and neighbouring Syria, with the impact felt as far away as Cairo, Egypt, and Italy bracing for a possible tsunami.
The British Geological Survey explains that earthquakes like these, which so often have devastating consequences, are the result of “sudden movement along faults within the earth”.
Joe Sommerlad explains why they take occur.