THE NW CENTRAL ANATOLIAN CONTRACTIONAL AREA: A MAJOR STRIKE-SLIP FAULT ZONES INDUCED NEOTECTONIC REGION IN THE ANATOLIAN PLATE, TURKEY

Turkey is a part of the Tethyan orogenic belt and it is one of the most tectonically active regions in the world where the African, Eurasian, and Arabian plates interact with each other. The Anatolian plate is bounded by the right-lateral North Anatolian and the left-lateral East Anatolian strike-slip fault zones and the Aegean-Cyprus subduction zone within this region. In addition to these main boundary zones, the plate consists many intracontinental fault zones. The right-lateral Eskisehir and Kirikkale-Erbaa strike-slip fault zones are the major ones in the NW central Anatolia. A triangle shaped area between the North Anatolian, Eskisehir, and Kirikkale-Erbaa fault zones has been defined as the ‘NW Central Anatolian Contractional Area’. This area includes several NW-SE contraction related structures such as the Beypazari Blind Thrust Zone, Abdusselam Pinched Crustal Wedge, and Eldivan-Elmadag Pinched Crustal Wedge from west to east, respectively. Our geological and geophysical field studies, focal mechanism solutions of the earthquakes, and the National Geodetic Network (TUTGA) based GPS strain analysis demonstrate that the whole triangle shaped area between the major strike-slip fault zones are under the influence of the active NW-SE contractional regime.