The effect of loading direction on the earthquake behavior of historical masonry minarets: The case of Aksaray Zafer Mosque minaret

Minarets, an important element of religious architecture, are used not only in mosques in Islamic culture, it is possible to come across these structures such as in madrasahs and mausoleums. Minarets, which were initially built without adhering to a specific architectural form, were generally built of stone, brick and wood in different forms in different regions and cultures. The main purpose of this study is to determine the critical axis of earthquake application for masonry minarets that have a door spaces and are not axisymmetric. For this, the minaret of the Zafer Mosque, located in the city center of Aksaray and with a masonry load carrying system, was selected from the technical literature. The 1999 Düzce, 2011 Van and 2023 Kahramanmaraş Earthquakes, which occurred recently in Turkey and caused many casualties, started from 0° (x-axis), in 15-degree increments, up to 180° has been applied. As a result of this study, the critical axes of the cited minaret and the regions where critical stress values occur, depending on the peak displacements under the cited earthquakes were obtained. The minaret goes under the "Controlled Damage" region under Van earthquake, the "Pre-Collapse" region under the Düzce earthquake, and beyond the "Pre-Collapse" region under the Kahramanmaraş earthquake. Furthermore, depending on the earthquake characteristics, the axis passing through the middle of the door (x-axis) or the axis exactly perpendicular to this axis (y-axis) was determined as the critical axis for the cited masonry minaret to be used in the design phase.