A Critical Review of The Anatolian Geology: A Dialectic To Sutures and Evolution Of The Anatolian Tethys and Neotethys

Abstract

A progressively improving hypothesis of evolution for the Anatolian Tethys and Neotethys will be presented in this paper. The Tethyan, the Western (Bursa-Ýzmir-Antalya zone) and the southern Neotethyan sutures will be substantiated after a discussion on the controversial aspects of the Anatolian geology. The initiation of the Tethys in Cambrian is supported on the basis of continous Palaeozoic sedimentation on north-facing Gondwanian and south-facing Eurasian platforms. A thin continental sliver, the Apula-Anatolia, started to rift off northern Gondwana in the Early Triassic coevally with the onset of the northward Tethyan subduction. The marginal ophiolites have obducted onto the Pontian active margin by the Middle Triassic as the consequence of the dextral rotation of Western Pontides. The compressional and dilatational fields have shifted oceanward due to a recess (?) of the subduction zone. The positive area covering most of the central and northern Sakarya has collapsed progressively and has been onlapped peripherically from the Liassic onwards. The Anatolian microcontinent detached off Africa in the Upper Triassic-Liassic and drifted northward during the Jurassic and the Cretaceous and collided incipiently with the Eurasian margin (Pontides) in the Upper Cretaceous. Unsubducted pockets of ocean floor have closed with consequent syn-collisional magmas in the Paleogene. The Salt Lake pocket, the East Anatolia and the Western Neotethys, the Intra-Gondwanian rift separating the Anatolia from Apulia-Greece, have survived until the Late Miocene.