Transtension in the context of Graben

The Dead Sea Transform (DST) fault system, also sometimes referred to as the Dead Sea Rift, is a series of faults that run for about 1,000 km from the Marash triple junction (a junction with the East Anatolian Fault in southeastern Turkey) to the northern end of the Red Sea Rift (just offshore of the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula). The fault system forms the transform boundary between the African plate to the west and the Arabian plate to the east. It is a zone of left lateral (sinistral) displacement, signifying the relative motions of the two plates. Both plates are moving in a general north-northeast direction, but the Arabian plate is moving faster, resulting in the observed left lateral motions along the fault of approximately 107 km at its southern end. A component of extension is also present in the southern part of the transform, which has contributed to a series of depressions, or pull-apart basins, forming the Gulf of Aqaba, Dead Sea, Sea of Galilee, and Hula basins. A component of shortening affects the Lebanon restraining bend, leading to uplift on both sides of the Beqaa valley. There is local transtension in the northernmost part of the fault system, forming the Ghab pull-apart basin. The southern part of the fault system runs roughly along the political border of Lebanon and Israel on its western side, and southern Syria and Jordan on the eastern side.

The North Anatolian Fault (NAF; Turkish: Kuzey Anadolu Fay Hattı) is an active right-lateral strike-slip fault in northern Anatolia, and is the transform boundary between the Eurasian plate and the Anatolian sub-plate. The fault extends westward from a junction with the East Anatolian Fault at the Karliova triple junction in eastern Turkey, across northern Turkey and into the Aegean Sea for a length of 1200−1500 kilometers. It runs about 20 km south of Istanbul.The North Anatolian Fault is similar in many ways to the San Andreas Fault in California. Both are continental transforms with similar lengths and slip rates. The Sea of Marmara near Istanbul is an extensional basin similar to the Salton Trough in California, where a releasing bend in the strike slip system creates a pull-apart basin.

Strike-slip tectonics or wrench tectonics is a type of tectonics that is dominated by lateral (horizontal) movements within the Earth's crust (and lithosphere). Where a zone of strike-slip tectonics forms the boundary between two tectonic plates, this is known as a transform or conservative plate boundary. Areas of strike-slip tectonics are characterised by particular deformation styles including: stepovers, Riedel shears, flower structures and strike-slip duplexes. Where the displacement along a zone of strike-slip deviates from parallelism with the zone itself, the style becomes either transpressional or transtensional depending on the sense of deviation. Strike-slip tectonics is characteristic of several geological environments, including oceanic and continental transform faults, zones of oblique collision and the deforming foreland of zones of continental collision.

The Ghab basin or Al-Ghab basin is a sedimentary basin in western Syria that lies beneath the Ghab Plain. It is developed between two of the main fault strands of the Dead Sea Transform (DST), the Missyaf fault to the south extending along its eastern flank and the Hacıpaşa fault to the north extending along its western flank. The left-stepping offset between these two faults has produced local transtension, creating a pull-apart basin. Based on the interpretation of limited seismic reflection data and a single hydrocarbon exploration borehole, the basin is understood to be filled by up to 3,400 m of Pliocene to recent sediments.