WHOLE-ROCK AND MINERAL CHEMISTRY OF MAFIC CUMULATES FROM THE LOW-Ti OPHIOLITE IN THE SOUTHERN PART OF KAHRAMANMARAŞ, TURKEY M. Tanirli and T. Rızaoğlu A Late Cretaceous dismembered ophiolite unit in the south of Kahramanmaraş belongs to the Peri-Arabian ophiolite belt in southern Turkey. <...> The ophiloitic rocks include, from bottom to top, metamorphic sole (plagioclase–amphibole schist and plagioclase amphibolite), mantle tectonites (serpentinized dunite and harzburgite), ultramafic cumulates (mainly websterite), mafic cumulates (olivine gabbro, gabbro, and olivine gabbronorite), and isotropic gabbros (olivine gabbronorite). <...> The whole-rock geochemistry of the cumulates suggests that they can mainly be classified as Low-Ti ophiolite and cumulate rocks derived from an island-arc tholeiitic magma source. <...> Chondrite-normalized REE and N-MORB-normalized multielement patterns and tectonomagmatic discrimination diagrams show that fractional crystallization was important during the formation of the cumulate rocks. <...> The presence of highly magnesian olivines (Fo78.24-81.89), clinopyroxenes (Mg#71.46-85.82), and orthopyroxenes (Mg#62.63-87.18) as well as highly calcic plagioclases (An81.88-97.40) in the mafic cumulates indicates a subduction-related tectonic environment. <...> The geochemical, petrographical, and field data suggest that the ophiolitic rocks in the studied region formed in a suprasubduction zone environment in the southern branch of Neotethys in the Late Cretaceous. <...> INTRODUCTION Turkey is located in a critical segment along the Alpine-Himalayan orogenic system, where ophiolitic bodies representing the remnants of the Neotethys are generally characterized in a structural descending order by ophiolites, metamorphic soles and ophiolitic melanges as the members of the suture zones of Anatolia (Şengцr and Yılmaz, 1981; Yılmaz et al., 1993; Robertson, 2002). <...> The Neotethyan ophiolites in Turkey are located mainly in E-W trending five belts. <...> These are namely the Tauride ophiolites, the Central Anatolian ophiolites, the Pontide ophiolites, the southeast Anatolian ophiolites and the Peri-Arabian ophiolite belt (Fig. 1). <...> The ophiolitic rocks to the south of Kahramanmaraş is located in the Peri-Arabian ophiolite belt (Fig. 1) and can be correlated with the Koзali ophiolite in the east and the Kızıldağ (Hatay) the Troodos ophiolites in the southwest along the Bitlis-Zagros suture. <...> For several years, ophiolitic units have been regarded as the obducted slices of the oceanic lithosphere, generated at the mid-ocean ridges (Gass, 1968, 1990; Coleman, 1977) or suprasubduction zones (Miyashiro <...>