Turkey's Earthquake History and Institution Based Earthquake Reduction Policies and Strategies

Abstract

Being one of the most powerful natural disasters, earthquakes are still one of the most serious dangers in the world regardless of whether development levels of countries are high or low. Turkey is a young country and is distinguished as one with high seismic risk due to its tectonic structure. The current risk of an earthquake varies from region to region due to differences in tectonic structures. Turkey, is located in the Alpine Himalayan seismic belt, one of the most active earthquake zones of the earth. The Northern Anatolia, East Anatolia, and Western Anatolian Fault lines are major fault lines in Turkey and constitute the basis of the distribution of earthquake events. When seismic data is analyzed together with maps of earthquake, it seems like an obvious and important fact of Turkey. At this point, the extent to which the earthquake issue take part in the state and government policies and the level of awareness about the earthquake is the main problem of this research. By considering the relevant institutions, the extent to which the earthquake was included in the natural disaster plans of these institutions was investigated. Regulations issued at various times regarding the aforementioned disaster risk in Turkey are available; however, these laws mostly focus on the post-disaster rehabilitation processes. It can be said that Turkey has not been successful in producing policies and strategies to reduce earthquake risks.