News
New Project Coming UP: Hasankeyf
nima taradji photography
Sep 19, 2019
The dam's project goes back to the 1950s and has taken many years to be completed and finally as of August 2019, the water has started to accumulate in the reservoir and as it rises Hasankeyf's days are numbered. The 6,000-foot-long, 1.2 billion euro behemoth of a dam is poised to generate 3,800-gigawatt hours of electricity annually, according to the Turkish government.
Ilisu Dam will flood more than 115 square miles of agricultural valley, submerging Hasankeyf and dozens of villages nearby. The villages and land that has fed off this river for centuries will now be its victim. For some residents of Hasankeyf and surrounding villages, the rising water is a calamity where their ancestral land and homes are being destroyed and for some others it is god sent. The government has built new residential buildings uphill: the New Hasankeyf into which the residents will move. With running water and modern facilities some villagers are happy but some others are going to miss the homes into which they and their father and grand parents were born. (Nima Taradji/Polaris)
