North Anatolian Fault North Anatolian Fault The North Anatolian Fault (NAF) () is an active right-lateral strike-slip fault in northern Anatolia which runs along the transform boundary between the Eurasian Plate and the Anatolian Plate. The fault extends westward from a junction with the East Anatolian Fault at the Karliova Triple Junction in eastern Turkey, across northern Turkey and into the Aegean Sea for a length of 1500 kilometers. It runs about 20 km south of Istanbul. The North Anatolian Fault is similar in many ways to the San Andreas Fault in California. Both are continental transforms with similar lengths and slip rates.
Anatolian diagonal and land bridges intermittently formed across the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmara. After the end of the most recent ice age, plants surviving to the west of the Anatolian diagonal could spread back into Europe while those to the east could spread into Syria, Iraq and the Near East. The Taurus Mountains provide a cool damp climate for species that cannot survive the hot dry summer climate on either side, and this could have encouraged survival and speciation, resulting in the many endemic species found here today. Anatolian diagonal The Anatolian diagonal is a theoretical dividing line which runs