The earthquake that devastated the area of Türkiye and north-west Syria on Monday morning is believed to be the most severe one since the 1939 earthquake which struck the eastern part of Türkiye.

Following the earthquake, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) determined that the epicenter was located at the intersection of three tectonic plates: the Arabian, Anatolian, and African plates. Under this circumstance, many believe such a huge earthquake represents the increasing activity of tectonic plate movement, and therefore worry about if this earthquake has any connection with the previous earthquakes that happened in China, including the 4.3-magnitude earthquake that happened near south China's Taiwan Province on February 7, and several small earthquakes happened in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. Ji Jianqing, a professor at the School of Earth and Space Sciences at Peking University, shared his opinion about these doubts and worries.

Professor Ji indicated that the earthquakes which occurred in China recently are normal activities of tectonic plate movements, and there is no evidence showing that these earthquakes have any relation to the Türkiye 7.8-magnitude earthquake. He also pointed out that big earthquakes usually cause public misunderstandings of seismicity—the distribution of earthquakes in space, time and magnitude, might increase rapidly. However, frequent earthquakes cannot become the exact indicator to measure if the tectonic plate movements of the area become active or passive.

For more:

What caused the disastrous earthquake in Türkiye?

(Cover image via CFP)

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