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The devastating earthquake that hit Turkey and Syria on Monday (6/2) also caused severe damage to Gaziantep Castle. This is a historic Roman era castle located in Anatolia, the Southeast region of Turkey.
Photos and footage from the scene show that most of the stone wall has collapsed on the surrounding hillside. Several ramparts in the east, south, and southeast of the castle were also destroyed by the earthquake. The dome and east wall of the 17th-century Åžirvani Mosque, located next to the castle, also partially collapsed.
Gaziantep Castle is considered one of the best preserved fortresses in Turkey. This building was built in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD when the Roman Empire ruled Anatolia, which is now Turkey.
Found on a hill in the heart of Gaziantep City, the castle is shaped like an irregular circle with a diameter of around 100 meters, featuring 12 towers and 36 bastions.
The structure was expanded and renovated in the era of the Byzantine emperor Justinian I in the 6th century AD. The building also underwent some further development work in 1557 under the reign of Suleiman the Great during the Ottoman Empire.
A magnitude 7.8 earthquake hit the Eastern Mediterranean at 4:17 local time, followed 11 minutes later by an aftershock of magnitude 6.7, on Monday (6/2). A second earthquake with a magnitude of 7.6 occurred less than 12 hours later.
The scale of the destruction is still being calculated, but it is clear that Turkey and Syria were severely damaged by the earthquake. On Tuesday (7/2), the official death toll was reported to have exceeded 5,000 and is expected to increase in the coming days and weeks.
This area is known to be geologically active because it is at the intersection between the Anatolian, Arabian, and African tectonic plates.
"Earthquakes occur when parts of a locked fault suddenly 'break', causing rocks to move quickly during a catastrophic event. Aftershocks are usually lower-magnitude earthquakes that occur when the earth's crust settles and recovers in its new position," commented Dr Catherine Mottram, senior lecturer in Structural Geology and Tectonics at the University of Portsmouth.
"There is the potential that a magnitude 7.5 shock is associated with second-period movement along a different depth or along a strike location on a fault, or on a different fault strand. Geophysicists will be able to reconstruct exactly where the movement occurred along the fault by reconstructing data collected by seismometers in the region, so more information will come out in the coming days and weeks about what actually happened," he added.