The East Anatolian Fault (EAF) is a left‐lateral transform fault accommodating the relative motion between the Anatolian and Arabian plates. On January 24, 2020, Mw6.8 Sivrice (Elazığ) earthquake is the largest event that occurred along the EAF since the nineteenth century. The earthquake provides a unique opportunity to capture a critical stage of the seismic cycle from the interseismic deformation to co‐seismic rupture. In this study, we examine the relationship between the interseismic fault activity and co‐seismic behavior of the earthquake. A kinematic model of the earthquake obtained from strong‐motion, GNSS and teleseismic waveforms along with static displacements from GNSS and InSAR data shows that the mainshock ruptured only 45 km of the 95 km long Sivrice‐Pütürge segment. Rupture initiated adjacent to the interseismically weakly coupled northeastern section and propagated unilaterally toward southwest with a rupture velocity of ∼2.5 km/s, stopping ∼30 km before the southwestern segment boundary. The earthquake did not generate any surface offsets. We identified 4 long‐term near‐repeating earthquake clusters beneath the highest co‐seismic slip zone adjacent to the northeastern creeping section. The mainshock was dynamically triggered by a M ∼ 5.4 foreshock located within the zone of near‐repeating earthquakes. We suggest that creep along the weakly coupled section of the fault loaded the neighboring locked section leading to the repeating earthquakes below the locked zone. The earthquake partially ruptured a fault segment characterized by high rate of diffuse seismicity, structural complexities and heterogeneous coupling, leading to a source characterized by a complex source time function with relatively slow rupture velocity. Plain Language Summary: Understanding the magnitude, location and slip distribution of large earthquakes is a crucial problem in earthquake studies. In this study, we analyze the rupture process of the 2020 Mw6.8 Elazığ‐Sivrice earthquake that occurred along the East Anatolian fault, which is a strike‐slip fault in eastern Turkey. We then relate the earthquake to the fault behavior in the time period before the earthquake. Our results show that the earthquake ruptured only part of a fault segment, generating two patches of slip along a fault section with geometrical complexities. The earthquake did not generate any significant surface slip. The rupture pattern is consistent with previously identified heterogeneous coupling with patches of creeping, partially locked and locked sections. The seismicity of this segment is also different from the neighboring segments with more distributed and higher rate of earthquake occurrence. We also identified near‐repeating earthquakes along the transition from the creeping section and locked section right beneath the highest slip patch of the 2020 earthquake. The 2020 earthquake reflects this heterogeneity of the long term behavior, with relatively slow rupture velocity, patchy slip distribution along a geometrically complex fault segment. Key Points: 2020 earthquake partially ruptured a segment with heterogeneous coupling and high rate of seismicity without any surface slipThe asperities were loaded by interseismically creeping sections. Near‐repeater clusters are detected below the 2020 rupture zoneThe duration and complexity of the source time function reflects the complexity of the rupture process [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]