Turkey now boasts 1,100 earthquake monitoring stations that help predict tremors and maintain safety across the country, the Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) announced on Twitter on Sunday.

"With Europe's second-largest earthquake monitoring network, we can measure quakes more precisely," added the agency, which is a division of Turkey's Interior Ministry.

Turkey is among the world's most seismically active countries as it is situated on several active fault lines, and dozens of minor earthquakes and aftershocks occur daily. The most potentially devastating fault line is the North Anatolian fault line (NAF), where the Anatolian and Eurasian plates meet. A strike-slip fault that formed as the Anatolian plate was being pushed northwestwards by the Arabian plate, the NAF has produced devastating earthquakes throughout history.

More than 17,000 people were killed and over 43,000 were injured when a magnitude 7.4 quake rocked the Marmara region for 37 seconds in the early hours of Aug. 17, 1999, with its epicenter located in Gölcük province, some 75 kilometers southeast of the Bosporus. Three months later, on Nov. 12, 1999, 845 people were killed and nearly 5,000 injured when a magnitude 7.0 earthquake hit Düzce province, about 120 kilometers northeast of Gölcük.

In September, a 5.8-magnitude earthquake in the Marmara Sea shook Istanbul and sent panic across the city, injuring 34 and damaging 473 buildings.