Experts urge calm after 170 microearthquakes off Istanbul

ISTANBUL

More than 170 microearthquakes have been detected around the Princes’ Islands fault in the Marmara Sea since Aug. 18, but experts said the cluster alone was not evidence of an imminent major earthquake.

The strongest tremor, with a magnitude of 3.2, struck south of the islands on Aug. 19.

Most of the activity was concentrated near a limited section of the fault, according to Türkiye’s Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency (AFAD).

Bahadır Aktuğ, a member of AFAD’s Earthquake Science Board and a geophysics professor at Ankara University, said the activity covered only about seven kilometers of the 44-kilometer fault.

The tremors showed no migration in depth or along the fault that would indicate progressive triggering, he said, adding that the data did not reveal a pattern pointing to a larger earthquake.

Board member Şükrü Ersoy said faults can periodically produce clusters of small tremors and warned that predicting an immediate large earthquake from such activity was speculative.

“The public has no reason to panic,” Ersoy said.

“What we should be discussing is not when faults will rupture, but how prepared our building stock is for a possible earthquake.”

In its own catalogue, Kandilli Observatory and Earthquake Research Institute said it located 117 earthquakes with magnitudes ranging from 0.7 to 3.1 within a 20-kilometer radius south of the islands between 6 a.m. on Aug. 18 and 1 p.m. on Aug. 20.

Kandilli described the activity as a microearthquake sequence clustered in time and space, noting that such sequences occasionally occur in active tectonic regions. It said the area was being monitored around the clock.