evidence: In the early morning of February 6, a devastating magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck southern Turkey, near the border with Syria. Numerous aftershocks followed, the strongest nearly rivaling the power of the main quake, at magnitude 7.5. By evening, the death toll had climbed to more than 3,700 across both countries, according to Reuters, and was expected to continue to rise. [...] The entire country is hemmed in by strike-slip, or sideways-sliding, fault zones: the North Anatolian Fault that runs roughly parallel to the Black Sea, and the East Anatolian Fault, near the border with Syria. As a result, Turkey is highly seismically active. Even so, Monday’s quake, which occurred on the East Anatolian Fault, was the strongest to strike the region since 1939, when a magnitude 7.8 quake killed 30,000 people.