The link shows that the M 5.0 quake today near the south branch of the North Anatolian fault was strike-slip (not a surprise. There is a fair amount of interest among those who work in this area how much slip is on this fault vs the fault within Maramara Sea a couple 10s of km farther north. The northern strand is considered by some to have most, or even almost all, of the plate motion. The north strand comes close to Istanbul and its 12 million people. The more slip on the south strand, the less is available on the north strand. There are complications with the GPS data that make it unclear how much on which (that I can go into later if there is interest). The other thing...and a focus of the workshop that we had...is whether the slip rates change with time over 1000s of years, so that the north strand may be most active now but other strands more active over the last 14,000 years. The same sort of thing may be going on in southern California.
Chris

• south branch NAF