Hasankeyf is a city situated in southeast Turkey, in the province of Batman. It is 12.000 years old, and has 5,500 caves, 550 monuments and historical sites, which belong to 24 different cultures. However, this open-air museum may disappear soon. Why?
Starting from the mid-1950s, the Turkish government started to inspect the Tigris river downstream of Diyarbakir to identify the best area for constructing a hydroelectric power plant. About 20 years later, the Turkish Electric Power Resources Survey and Development Administration (EIE) identified Ilısu as the preferred site. In 2006, the Ilısu Dam project’s construction officially started, not without controversies.
The Ilısu Dam project is located in southeast Anatolia, on the Tigris River. To the project’s proponents, it should provide hydroelectric power and water storage, and control floods. Another smaller dam, the Cizre Dam, should provide irrigation and electricity. During the ground-breaking ceremony in 2006, the then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan declared that “this dam will bring big gains to the local people,”[1] new jobs will be created, the agricultural sector will benefit from better irrigation and tourism will increase. The Ilisu Dam is just one part of a major project, the Southeastern Anatolian Project (also called GAP), that actually foresees 22 dams, 19 of which have already been completed.
However, this is not the whole story. The GAP has already caused the displacement of farmers in Turkey as well as in Iraq, many of which were never compensated. Now, the forthcoming completion of the Ilsu Dam project poses other threats.
Realizing the entire Ilısu Dam project would signify letting Hasankeyf disappear under the flood: the ancient city and its archaeological site, along with its 199 settlements would be inundated. When construction began, the Turkish government declared that between 60,000 and 70,000 people[2] would have been ‘economically or physically displaced;’ others say they will be around 80,000. The government declared it will provide monetary compensation, and some of the displaced people have already been compensated, but with amounts that are insufficient to buy new houses in the region. Therefore, they will be forced to move to another region or to the cities.
Beyond the social impact, there are environmental externalities. Aware of these, in 2013, the Administrative Court of Ankara ordered that the construction could not go on, due to the fact that the Public Administration had not carried out an Environmental Impact Assessment. However, the judges’ intervention was not powerful enough to stop the progress of the project.
The environmental concerns mostly come from two factors. First of all, the Ilisu reservoir will reduce the capacity of auto-purification of the Tigris river; this is a problem due to the huge amount of waste that ends up in the river from big cities. There are plans for wastewater treatment plants but their real effectiveness is not clear. Secondly, the reservoir will expose people to new diseases such as Malaria and Leishmaniosis.
The Ilisu Dam brings a cultural impact too. The archaeological sites of the area will be eaten away, and with them the potential to find human civilization’s roots. This is why some people speak of a “cultural genocide.” Europa Nostra organization, the leading citizen movement to protect and celebrate Europe’s cultural and natural heritage, also inserted the area in the list of the 7 most Endangered heritage sites in 2016.
However, on February 21th of this year, the ECHtR rejected to take any responsibility for conserving the archaeological site. According to the judges, this is up to the Turkish authorities.
Therefore, despite all this skepticism, the project appears destined to be concluded. What else could be done? The group Keep Hasankeyf Alive (Hyg) calls for civil society to join the “big jump.” On the 14th of July, activists and people who are against the construction of the dam will jump into the Tigris River as a sign of protest. Keep Haankeyf Alive is a civil society movement founded in 2006; it gathers many activists, associations and communities that want to bring the attention to the Ilisu dam project and stop it. Until now, through protests, sits-in and legal actions, the movement has already obtained some results. The Turkish government wanted to start filling the dam on the 10 of June of this year. However, particularly thanks to the mobilizations of the 7th and 8th of June, the government decided to postpone it.
Perhaps big jump will have an even stronger impact.
