Major Recent Tectonic Uplift in Iskenderun Bay, Turkey

Abstract

Radiocarbon dating was carried out in the sediment profiles of four marine sediment cores taken from Iskenderun Bay, Turkey. The bay is quite shallow in the present day, and a previous tectonic study had considered that the bay floor might have been subsiding. However, this cannot be so, for the 14C ages would thereby lead to the apparent paradox of normal marine sedimentation having taken place during times when glacio-eustatic sea level lowering would have exposed the bay floor. Rather, we conclude that the floor of Iskenderun Bay on the whole has been experiencing rapid uplift since the end of the Last Glacial, due to a combination of tectonic factors linked to the compression between the Anatolian and African plates.