11,000-year-old Turkish town about to be submerged forever
The town of Hasankeyf, Turkey, will soon be only a memory.
From her front door, Fatima Salkan has a sweeping view of the fruit trees, historic ruins and tidy stone compounds that run along this stretch of the Tigris River in southeastern Turkey. She tries her best not to look off in the distance, to the right. The town on the horizon, still under construction, is where she will move when the valley is flooded by a downstream hydropower dam.
“Do you see all these old places?” she asks in Kurdish. “We are the owner, but today we are homeless.”
High above, an old Roman fortress crowns a limestone cliff, which is dotted with the caves where her parents and grandparents once lived. The valley below, emerald-green after a recent rain, is studded with yellow wild mustard flowers and bright red poppies. At 45, Hasankeyf is the only home Salkan has ever known. A future severed from it feels like no future at all.
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Now, about 25 miles downstream, the Ilisu Dam is complete. The 6,000-foot-long, 1.2 billion euro behemoth is poised to generate 3,800-gigawatt hours of electricity annually, according to the Turkish government. When the project becomes operational — in June, officials claim — it will flood more than 115 square miles of an agricultural valley, submerging Hasankeyf and dozens of villages nearby. The very river that nourished the town for centuries will swallow it whole.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/11000-year-old-turkish-town-about-to-be-submerged-forever/ar-AABKOp6?li=BBnb7Kz
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