Turkey, lies in a region of weaker, mainly continental lithosphere where the crust is only about 30 km thick, close to a point where three tectonic plates come together – Africa, Arabia and Anatolia. The convergence of the Arabian plate is squeezing the wedge-like Anatolian plate out to the west, generating a series of sub-vertical, strike-slip faults such as the East Anatolian Fault, which failed during the magnitude 7.8 event.