Notwithstanding the astonishingly incorrect answers to this question, as a person who lived
Notwithstanding the astonishingly incorrect answers to this question, as a person who lived for years in the earthquake area I can suggest the following causes in descending order. Magnitudes were high. Imagine Big One in San Andreas fault. Then imagine another Big One within hours with a close by epicenter. These were by far the largest earthquakes for a century in Turkey and the Middle East, which are earthquake zones. Three different seismic plates merging at the devastation area means hundreds of smaller quakes, which shook the area before, in between and after the two peak ones. Previously many seismologists did not expect a fault line just 100km long produce such an earthquake of ‘500 nuclear weapons’ at 7.7 and 7.6 consequetively. Buildings are by law supposed to be constructed to withstand 8.0 magnitude earthquakes on Richter scale but nobody expected a double 7.7 and 7.6 earthquakes in the region with a short fault line. Although in Turkey civil engineering both science and pr...