The quake, which struck at 1:31 a.m. (2231 GMT on Thursday), was located off the southwestern coastal city of Marmaris. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said that the quake was as big as magnitude 6.7, while Boğaziçi University's Kandilli Observatory maintains 6.3. It was close to the Turkish town of Bodrum and the Greek island of Kos in the Dodecanese Islands archipelago.
The temblor, initially reported as a magnitude 6.9, was very shallow, only 6.2 miles (10 km) below the seabed, the USGS said.
A magnitude 6.7 quake is considered strong and is capable of causing considerable damage, but the effects of this one would have been dampened by seas.
Turkey is among one of the world's most seismically active countries as it is situated on a number of active fault lines, with the most potentially devastating one being the Northern Anatolia Fault (NAF), where the Anatolian and Eurasian plates meet.
The NAF, a strike-slip fault formed as the Anatolian plate was being pushed northwestwards by the Arabian plate, has produced devastating earthquakes throughout history, with the most recent ones being magnitude 7.4 and 7.2 earthquakes in northwestern Izmit and Düzce provinces in August and December 1999. The 1999 earthquakes killed thousands in Kocaeli, Adapazarı, Istanbul, Yalova and nearby towns in the northwest, which serve as Turkey's economic and industrial heartland.
In the latest earthquake-related disaster, than 600 people died in October 2011 in the eastern province of Van after a quake of 7.2 magnitude and powerful aftershocks.
Years after the disaster, Turkey has seen an overhaul in measures to prevent damage from earthquakes, such as compulsory earthquake insurance and campaigns to raise awareness and inform the public about earthquake preparedness.
Additionally, the government has undertaken the ambitious project of urban transformation wherein old and crumbling buildings across the country are being demolished to make way for new, earthquake resistant buildings.
Scientists have warned that the epicenter of Turkey's next big earthquake is likely to occur under the Sea of Marmara, where the NAF passes.
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