A block squeezed out sideways
The Anatolian Plate is a microplate made mostly of continental crust. It carries about 58% of Turkey, including the central Anatolian plateau and the Mediterranean coast, plus all of Cyprus and Northern Cyprus. The rest of Turkey lies on three other plates: the Black Sea coast and Thrace on the Eurasian Plate, the southeast on the Arabian Plate, and part of the Aegean coast on the Aegean Sea Plate.
Geologists separate Anatolia because it moves as a fairly rigid block between bounding faults. As Arabia drives north into Eurasia, there is no room for the crust to thicken forever, so Anatolia is squeezed out to the west, much like a seed pressed between two fingers. Some models combine Anatolia and the Aegean into one Aegean-Anatolian block, since the two move in similar directions.
What happens at its edges
The northern boundary with Eurasia, about 1,400 km long, follows the North Anatolian Fault, a right-lateral strike-slip fault. PB2002 gives it a relative speed of about 2.4 cm/yr, the fastest of the plate’s boundaries.
In the east, the plate meets Arabia along the East Anatolian Fault, a left-lateral strike-slip fault, and the Bitlis collision zone, with motion of about 1.6 cm/yr. To the south, the seafloor of the African Plate sinks beneath the plate along the Cyprus Arc at about 1.4 cm/yr. In the west, the boundary with the Aegean Sea Plate is divergent, at about 1.5 cm/yr. That stretching opens the east-west grabens of western Turkey, such as the valleys of the Gediz and Büyük Menderes rivers.
Earthquakes and volcanoes
The dataset records 24 earthquakes of magnitude 6.5 or larger on the plate since 1900. The best-known group struck the North Anatolian Fault in a westward sequence that began with the 1939 Erzincan earthquake. It continued with the 1943 Tosya earthquake (M7.5) near Ilgaz, the 1944 Bolu-Gerede earthquake (M7.6) and later events, and reached the 1999 Izmit earthquake (M7.6) near the Sea of Marmara, which killed more than 17,000 people. Earlier, the 1912 Mürefte earthquake (M7.2) and the 1953 Yenice-Gönen earthquake (M7.3) struck the western part of the fault system.
The 2023 Kahramanmaraş sequence ruptured the plate’s eastern edge. Its second large shock, the M7.5 Elbistan earthquake, falls on the Anatolian side in the dataset, while the M7.8 main shock plots on the Arabian side. Western Anatolia’s extension also produces large quakes, including the 1970 Gediz earthquake (M7.2).
The plate has 3 volcanoes in the dataset. The largest is Mount Erciyes near Kayseri, a stratovolcano that rises above the volcanic plateau of Cappadocia.