Lessons learned from the past earthquakes on building performance in Turkey

Abstract

In the last 30 years, about twenty earthquakes, which were greater than magnitude M=6.0, occurred in different parts of Turkey especially close to fault lines. These earthquakes caused many buildings to be destroyed or heavily damaged, and the loss of many people’s lives. The painful lessons learned after the earthquakes resulted to the revision or change of the current earthquake codes used in Turkey for this period. Considering the fault characteristics in Turkey, it is expected to be major earthquakes in the coming years. Lessons learned from the past earthquakes will be very important in reducing the damages that will occur in future earthquakes. When looking into the building stock in Turkey, it is observed that a large part of the housing stock consisting of reinforced concrete (RC) and masonry structures. This paper aims to outline the performance of masonry and RC buildings during the six major catastrophic earthquakes occurred between 1992 and 2020 in various regions of Turkey. Also, a short summary is given about the development of the earthquake codes used in Turkey between 1940 and 2018. The selected six hazardous earthquakes that occurred on the North Anatolian Fault (NAF) and East Anatolian Fault (EAF) are 13 March 1992 Erzincan, 27 June 1998 Adana-Ceyhan, 17 August 1999 Kocaeli, 1 May 2003 Bingöl, 23 October 2011 Van and 24 January 2020 Elazığ-Sivrice earthquakes. At the end of the study, the types of damage occurring in the masonry and RC buildings were given in detail according to years, and the relationship between the changes that occurred in the earthquake codes over time was presented.