Abstract

This paper describes, compares, and enumerates spatial and temporal morphotectonic elements exposed in and around The Adana plain and the surrounding marine basins and the mountains, the Taurus, Amanos, and Misis–Andirin ranges. The Adana-Iskenderun basin complex, South Turkey, is a post-Miocene, composite tectonic entity that experienced several tectonic restructuring phases. Because of this, its borders and characters have changed continuously. The tectonic forces, sourced from the Arabian Plate's collision with the Anatolian continents along The Southeastern Anatolian suture, pervaded the entire Anatolia and its surroundings a chain of events from the late Miocene onward. They have caused the uplifting of the Taurus and Amanos Mountains. The rise delimited the northeastward extension of the Mediterranean Sea and left the sea basin as a structural depression in the South of the elevated terrains. This event corresponds to the initial stage of development of the Adana plain and the adjacent sea basins. After the Miocene, westerly escape tectonics replaced the north–south orthogonal shortening deformation along the Southeast Anatolian Orogenic Belt. Consequently, transpressional strike-slip faults were generated. The faults collectively began to transfer the compression to SW starting from the Pleistocene. Later, toward the South, where the Eastern Mediterranean is, the faults' character gradually changed from the transpressional to the transtensional. The associated faults caused the enlargement of the Adana depression. Partly coevally with these tectonic events in the northern regions, the slab steepening occurred in the Eastern Mediterranean oceanic lithosphere in the South. The consequent trench retreat caused a regionwide extension on the upper plate, where the faults ruptured the sea basins and caused their enlargement to cover large areas in the sea and the land.

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