3-1- Geological Data 
Based on limited geological data, Topuz et al. (2017) state that the metamorphic rocks and the overlying ophiolitic layer of eastern Anatolia were exhumed during the Late Cretaceous, above which the sediments of Maastrichtian transgression were deposited. This view necessitates two highly improbable consequences.
a)-the continental crust must have remained buried under the thick, dense ophiolitic layer for more than 60-70 Ma period, which seems physically highly unlikely, and does not fit with tectonic behavior of the Alpine-Himalayan Mountain ranges,
b)-the stratigraphic data documented in Fig 3 display that the wholesale elevation of the eastern Anatolia above the sea level occurred during the Late Eocene-Oligocene. The bulk of eastern Anatolia became emergent in Neogene (Şengör and Yılmaz 1981; Bedi and Yusufoğlu 2018; Okay et al 2020; McNab et al 2018).
Moreover, geological data from the neighboring orogenic belts, the Pontide, and the Southeastern orogens reveal also that the oceanic environment survived in these regions until the Middle Eocene (Dilek and Sandvol 2009; Hassig et al. 2013; Nikishin et al. 2015; Sosson et al. 2017; Meijers et al. 2017; Yılmaz 2019, see also the accompanying papers by Yılmaz et al. in this volume). Elevation of fragments of the accretionary complex, reaching somewhere above the sea during the Late Cretaceous-Early Eocene period does not rule out the ocean’s existence in the region, similar to many growing accretionary prisms of the world today, such as the Aegean-Eastern Mediterranean region (Robertson et al. 1996).
The hypothesis by Topuz et al. (2017) is based essentially on the presence of the metamorphic inliers surrounded by the accretionary complex located between the towns of Tekman, Hınıs, Karayazı and Aktuzla (Figs 2 and 8A). They argue that these metamorphic assemblages represent fragments of the elevated old metamorphic basement. The following evidence questions validity of this hypothesis. Figure 8B illustrates a geological cross-section along the largest metamorphic inlier (A-B section in Fig 8 B). The cross-section and the aerial photos in Fig 8 C and Figs 9 A and B show that the outcrops do not represent intact rock masses. They are observed either as tectonic wedges imbricated with the accretionary complex (Figs 9 A and 9 B) or as thrust sheets resting above the ophiolitic mélange (Fig 8 A, B, and C).
Furthermore, the data summarized below do not favor the presence of an old metamorphic basement under the ophiolitic mélange:
a)- The field evidence from the northern (the Çayırlı-Tercan-Aşkale-Pasinler basins), central (the Tekman-Hınıs-Malazgirt-Tekman basins), and southern (the Muş-Bingöl-Gevaş basins) (Fig 2) regions of the East Anatolia, particularly from the basin boundaries where the base rocks are exposed, reveal that there is almost always an ophiolitic mélange under the Neogene cover (Figs 3 and 5C).
b)- All the wells drilled by the oil and gas industry in the region cutting through the Neogene succession penetrated the ophiolitic mélange (unpublished TPAO data).