Syrian President and his wife visit earthquake victims

The movement of the tectonic plates builds up pressure on fault zones at their boundaries. It is the sudden release of this pressure that causes earthquakes and ground shaking. This latest earthquake is likely to have happened on one of the major faults that marks the boundaries between the Anatolian and Arabian plates: either the East Anatolian fault or the Dead Sea Transform fault. These are both “strike-slip faults”, which means they accommodate some motion of plates moving past each other.