The East Anatolian Fault is a major left-lateral strike-slip fault stretching some 700 kilometres across southeastern Turkey, from the Karlıova junction in the northeast down toward the Gulf of İskenderun. It forms the boundary along which the Anatolian block is squeezed westward, away from the collision between the Arabian and Eurasian plates.
Together with the North Anatolian Fault it defines the escape tectonics of Anatolia: as Arabia pushes north, the wedge of Turkey is extruded sideways toward the Aegean. The fault is divided into several segments, and its northern half had been relatively quiet in historical times, storing strain over centuries.
On 6 February 2023 the fault ruptured in a devastating magnitude 7.8 earthquake near Gaziantep, followed hours later by a magnitude 7.5 event on a linked strand. The double rupture broke hundreds of kilometres of the fault system, killed more than 55,000 people across Turkey and Syria, and levelled entire cities.