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Turkey: Building a Dam to displace thousands of
Kurds from Kurdish region
6.8.2006
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Kurds from nearly 200 Kurdish
villages will lose their homes
DIYARBAKIR, Kurdistan-Turkey, August 6, --
Turkey began yesterday building a major dam on the
Tigris river in southeastern Turkey
(Kurdistan-Turkey), overriding fierce criticism that
the project will devastate a millenia-old historic
site and displace thousands of Kurds.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan joined a
ground-breaking ceremony for the Ilisu Dam outside
Dargecit town, 46km from the Syrian border, marking
the start of a project that was first mooted in the
late 1970s and has ever since remained
controversial.
At the core of opposition to the dam is nearby
Hasankeyf, a small poverty-stricken town on the
banks of the Tigris, once a mighty city in ancient
Mesopotamia, part of which will be submerged by the
dam's giant reservoir.
The many critics of the project argue that the dam,
to be completed with a hydroelectric power plant,
will destroy Hasankeyf's unique heritage which
includes Assyrian, Roman and Ottoman monuments and
ruin the traditional way of life of its population
of ethnic Kurds and Arabs.
Erdogan hailed the project as a proof of Ankara's
determination to raise the living standards of its
Kurdish minority.
"The step that we are taking today demonstrates that
the southeast is no longer neglected... This dam
will bring big gains to the local people," he said
at the televised ceremony.
Scheduled to become operational in 2013, the $1.55
billion Ilisu Dam will become Turkey's second
largest reservoir and fourth largest hydroelectric
power plant, generating 3.8bn kWh of electricity
annually.
Officials say 80pc of Hasankeyf's archaelogical
sites - including tombs and hundreds of cave houses,
already damaged by nature's impact and years of
negligence - will remain above the planned
waterline.
The monuments that would be flooded - including
mosques, a hammam (Turkish bath) and the remains of
an ancient bridge over the Tigris - will be
relocated to a would-be open-air museum nearby,
which Erdogan pledged would turn the region into a
"tourist centre." The government is determined to
salvage Hasankeyf's heritage, Erdogan said, adding
that $85 million had been allocated for the
archaeological work, already under way.
Opponents argue that even if the monuments are
safely relocated, the integrity of the site and the
original landscape will be destroyed for good.
The government will also compensate people from
nearly 200 Kurdish villages who will lose their
homes, estimated to number at least 50,000, and is
planning to build a new town for Hasankeyf
residents.
"This dam will destroy a history of 12,000 years,"
grumbled Hasankeyf Mayor Abdulvahap Kusen, part of a
vocal civic coalition battling the project.
"Neither I nor anyone else will go to the new
settlement. We will all migrate to big cities if
Hasankeyf is flooded," he said.
The Ilisu dam is a key element of the Southeastern
Anatolian Project (GAP) that envisages a total of 22
dams and 19 hydroelectric plants across the region,
most of them on the Tigris and the Euphrates.
The project has triggered protests from neighboring
Iraq and Syria that Turkey is monopolising the
waters of the two rivers, which flow on south to
their drought-plagued territories.
AP | Agencies | Gulf Daily
Southeastern Turkey:
North Kurdistan (
Kurdistan-Turkey) wikipedia
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