• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.45 no.4
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• pp.465-476
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• 2012

The Anatolia peninsula consists of several continental fragments that include the Pontide Block in north and the Anatolide-Touride Block in south as well as the Arabian Platform in southeast. These continental blocks were joined together into a single landmass in the late Tertiary. During most of the Phanerozoic these continental blocks were separated by paleo-oceans, such as Paleo-Tethys and Neo-Tethys. The Pontide Block in north show Laurasian affinities, and was only slightly affected by the Alpide orogeny; they preserve evidence for the Variscan and Cimmeride orogenies. The Pontic Block is composed of the Strandja, Istanbul and Sakarya zones that were amalgamated into a single terrane by the mid Cretaceous times. The Anatolide-Tauride Block in south shows Gondwana affinities but was separated from Gondwana in the Triassic and formed an extensive carbonate platform during the Mesozoic. The Anatolide-Tauride Block was intensely deformed and partly metamorphosed during the Alpide orogeny; this leads to the subdivision of the Anatolide-Tauride Block into several zones on the basis of the type and age of metamorphism and deformation. The Arabian Platform in southeast forms the northernmost extension of the Arabian Plate that shows a stratigraphy similar to the Anatolide-Tauride Block with a clastic-carbonate dominated Palaeozoic and a carbonate dominated Mesozoic succession. A new tectonic era started in Anatolia Peninsula in the Oligocene-Miocene after the final amalgamation of these continental blocks and plate. This neotectonic phase is characterized by extension, and strike-slip faulting, continental sedimentation, and widespread calcalkaline magmatism, which played a very important role in producing beautiful landscapes of the Anatolia Peninsula today.