Seismicity of East Anatolian of Turkey and Failures of Infill Walls Induced by Major Earthquakes

There are three major fault zones in Turkey scattered around the country known as East Anatolian Fault (EAF), North Anatolian Fault (NAF) and Anatolian-Aegean Subduction Zone (AASZ). Last two decades, EAF has been rather quiescent compared with NAF. However, this quiescence was broken in the beginning of the millennium. The strong shaking was started in 2003 with Bingöl earthquake (Mw = 6.3) and the last earthquake on the EAF is the Sivrice-Elazığ (Mw = 6.8) on January 24, 2020. Strong seismicity of these faults damaged the structures severely and caused death of the habitants. This study aims to present, seismotectonic of the region, general characteristics of the earthquakes and more specifically to report structural damage of infill walls of the structure’s damages caused by these earthquakes. Damage evaluation and identification of the observed infill wall damages due to 2003 Bingöl, 2011 Van earthquakes and January 24, 2020 Sivrice-Elazığ earthquake occurred Turkey’s Eastern region, were presented, and possible solutions were suggested. Moreover, the effects of the infill walls on the behavior of structures under static and dynamic load cases are discussed that experienced in these earthquakes. Damages are classified according to formations such as in-plane or out-of-plane, evaluations and the results obtained from the discussions are presented for each category.