On August 17th, 1999 (the seventh day of the seventh lunar month), a strong earthquake struck Turkey and killed 18,000 people.

On August 17, 1999, a powerful earthquake in northwestern Turkey¡¯s Izmit region caused the country a direct economic loss of at least $20 billion. Statistics released on the afternoon of August 24 by the Prime Minister¡¯s Office of Turkey¡¯s Centre for Crisis Management showed that Turkey¡¯s Severe Severe Severe Severe Severe Severe Severe Severe Severe Severe Severe Severe Severe Severe Severe Severe Severe Severe Severe Severe Severe Severe Severe Severe Severe Severe Severe Severe Severe Severe Severe Severe Severe Severe Severe Severe Severe Severe Severe Severe Severe Severe Severe Severe Severe Severe Severe Severe Severe Severe Severe Severe Severe Severe Severe Severe Severe Severe Severe Severe Severe Severe Severe

According to a Turkish earthquake expert who asked not to be named, the poor construction quality was one of the main reasons for the collapse of many buildings during this strong earthquake, resulting in heavy casualties. He said that since the early 1980s, Turkey's economy has developed rapidly, and many construction contractors have bought poor-quality building materials in order to earn more price difference, and blindly pursued speed. This is how a large number of residential buildings in Turkey were built. Take Istanbul as an example. Although the city is located in the center of the earthquake, most of the casualties caused by the earthquake occurred in the emerging suburban areas with many building quality problems. Most areas of the old city have not been greatly damaged, most buildings are intact, shops and restaurants are open as usual, and tourist attractions located in the city center are hardly damaged in the earthquake. Many foreign tourists can still be seen near the world-famous Hagia Sophia and Blue Mosque. In this earthquake, the casualties in this city were mainly caused by the collapse of some buildings due to poor construction quality. He believes that on this issue, Turkish authorities should take responsibility for the collapse of many poor-quality buildings due to the failure to strictly control the quality of building materials.

Some analysts believe that the big earthquake in Izmit, Turkey, is the latest of seven major earthquakes that have occurred along the northern Anatolia breakout since 1939. Turkey is located on the earthquake belt, and the shell changes caused by the previous big earthquake will "create conditions" for the next earthquake, so the earthquake will happen in a row like the dominoes. In 1939, a magnitude 8 earthquake occurred in the Turkish Erzincan region, causing the 362 km-long breakout of the northern Anatolia breakout. Since then, from 1942 to 1967, there have been five major earthquakes along this breakout, each of which has destroyed parts of the western layer of the earthquake. The place where the big earthquake occurred is exactly where the

They said that the squeezing of three active geological tectonic plates against each other was the root cause of this earthquake. Turkey, along with the rest of the eastern Mediterranean, is one of the most earthquake-prone areas in the world. To the south of Turkey is the African plate and to the east is the Arab plate, which move northward and oppose the Eurasian plate, which is moving southward. These plates move at a speed of 1.3 to 2 centimeters every year and squeeze each other, which greatly increases the pressure on the edge of the plates and is easy to cause earthquakes. The North Anatolian fault, they say, is located exactly where two plates are squeezing against each other. The pressure on the earth's crust continued to increase, and finally the fault suddenly ruptured, which triggered this earthquake.