Glen...hmm...have to be careful because anything having to do with earthquakes at Istanbul is sensitive, and I am not a ground motion seismologist...but, have spoke to Jim Brune a few times, who is, and I've heard various places that the ground motion in the hanging-wall above a thrust fault is (much?) worse than the motion during a strike-slip earthquake (everything else being the same). If the North Anatolia faulty dips north opposite western Istanbul, it will both have a thrust component (because the seafloor is N-side-up) and the deep fault will be closer to the coast (the seafloor trace is 10 km offshore).

Distance from a strike-slip fault is really important for damage: e.g. Jim Brune precariously balanced rocks in southern California...although Los Angeles has bad site conditions...

So, I'm about to submit my SCEC abstract on the North Anatolian fault...and I backed off from the wording of a co-author...because we have not done the advanced imaging yet ("migration"/pre-stack depth migration). But, I think I retained that there is evidence of contraction near the fault offshore western Istanbul.

OK, better submit it now.
Chris