Sedimentary Evolution of the Paleozoic Basin Fill, Southeast Turkey

I. P. Tunbridge

The Paleozoic succession of southeast Turkey reaches its thickest development in the Hakkari district. Here, well-exposed Paleozoic rocks of Cambrian to Permian age are more than 5 km thick, representing a punctuated accumulation of clastic and carbonate sediments on the northern margin of the Arabian shield. Lower Cambrian rocks (> 1.5 km thick) are recorded in the Sadan Formation. A range of deltaic and fluviatile facies are present here. These developed as large-scale meandering then later braided river systems, which flowed north from the Arabian shield. Peritidal dolomites of the Koruk Formation follow, succeeded by 1 km of Cambrian-Ordovician storm-swept shelf sandstones and mudstones of the Seyisehir Formation. Following a Middle Ordovician break, a thin (25 m) shgillian siliciclastic shelf sea succession occurs, known as the Sort Tepe Formation. Silurian sediments are not found, and the Devonian of the Hakkari district is marked by the Upper Devonian Yiginli Formation. This formation records a 380-m regressive-transgressive fluvial-deltaic couplet, with deltaic conditions terminated by an Early Carboniferous eustatic sea-level rise. This event permitted the development of a 250 m-thick black shale facies (Koprulu Formation), which was succeeded by 130 m of carbonate mound facies (Belek Formation). Thick (2,000 m) carbonate sequences of the Habbur Formation (Permian) mark the start of the thick carbonate sequences which persisted from the late Paleozoic through the Mesozoic in the region.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #91032©1988 Mediterranean Basins Conference and Exhibition, Nice, France, 25-28 September 1988.