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The Mw 7.8 earthquake of 2023 ruptured the southern (main) branch of the East Anatolian Fault (EAF), followed by the Mw 7.6 earthquake on the northern (ardak Fault) branch of the EAF nine hours later. In March, we installed ten carbon-rod extensometers across segments of the main and northern branches of the ruptured faults, where potential slip deficits were considered possible, to investigate if afterslip continues. It is important to measure afterslip to understand the behaviour of a fault, if any, resulting from stresses associated with local coseismic slip deficits. Seven of these extensometers recorded less than a few millimetres of slip since March. In Gksun near the western end of the ardak fault, we recorded more than a 25 mm of accelerating afterslip preceding local aftershocks of magnitude Mw5.1. The Mw 6.8 Elaz-Sivrice earthquake of January 24, 2020, and the Mw 7.8 Kahramanmara earthquake of February 6, 2023, stopped in the Ptrge region, where it is named as Ptrge Gap. To understand why these two earthquakes terminated there, an array of five extensometers were ultimately deployed. One of the extensometers, which is 52 m long, shows that slip > 3.8 mm/yr continues at depth. Extensometers spaced 45 km apart recorded an eastward propagating subsurface creep event in September 2023. Four cGPS stations recording at 5 Hz were installed in an array to better investigate the subsurface evolution of aseismic slip on the Ptrge Fault in the village of Tam.
Ayruk et al. (Fri,) studied this question.