Towns across the Marmara region held memorial events early Tuesday to mark the anniversary of the 17 August 1999 earthquake, a 7.4-magnitude disaster centered beneath Golcuk that killed more than 18,000 people and injured over 48,000.
In Adapazari, several hundred people assembled near city hall just after midnight. A reading of Mustafa Emircan's poem "A Dry Frost in My Eyes" opened the proceedings, followed by a presentation on earthquake preparedness. Sakarya Governor Mustafa Buyuk addressed the crowd.
Kocaeli hosted a ceremony at Fleet Command for the 420 military personnel who died in the disaster. The Anadolu Agency marked the occasion with a photo exhibition titled "Kocaeli That Night."
A panel in Golcuk brought together earthquake specialists, including Dr. Dogan Kalafat of the Kandilli Observatory's National Earthquake Watch Center, who noted that Türkiye experiences roughly 25 earthquakes daily and faces a quake exceeding 6.0 on the Richter scale roughly every ten years.
Hundreds in Yalova placed flowers at the city's Earthquake Monument to honor the 2,504 residents among the victims. The disaster collapsed more than 110,000 buildings across the region.
Historical summary. TurkishPress restated this wire report, first published in August 2010, in its own words.