It is one of the oldest continuously inhabited settlements on Earth, a town on the banks of the Tigris, in southeastern Turkey, that dates back to the Bronze Age. Over the years it has survived the rise and fall of empires, drought, war and the harsh vicissitudes of nature.
However, Hasankeyf is facing the prospect of being flooded out of existence as Turkish authorities seek to speed up a dam project in southeast Anatolia that will raise the level of the river by 60m.
“Hasankeyf has housed all the civilizations of Mesopotamia,” said Idris Turan, a local guide. “Romans, Byzantines, Assyrians, Arabs, Mongols and Ottomans — they have all passed through here and left their marks on the town.”
The remains of a medieval bridge, one of the largest of its era, still withstand the currents of the Tigris. On the northern bank stands the 15th century Zeynel Bey mausoleum, with its kufic tiles of glazed turquoise. More than 300 historical sites lie in and around Hasankeyf, many of them unexplored.
Activists, both local and international, are fighting for the town, but the Turkish government is pressing ahead. Germany, Austria and Switzerland withdrew financial support for the Ilisu dam in July 2009, citing concerns about the social and environmental impact, but the Turkish government was able to secure domestic financing for the 1.1 billion euro (US$1.56 billion) project.
At the inauguration ceremony, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan ordered the opening of the dam to be brought forward from 2016 to 2014.
Pointing to the dust clouds rising from a construction site across the Tigris, Omer Guzel, a shop owner and activist, said: “That’s where the new town of Hasankeyf is being built. It feels like we will be buried alive and all we can do is sit and watch them dig our graves.”
All is not yet lost. In March, a court ordered an assessment of Hasankeyf’s cultural value and the damage the dam might cause.
The investigation was brought about by the determination of a sole plaintiff.
Murat Cano, a lawyer, has been fighting the dam since 2000 on the basis that it violates a Turkish law for the preservation of historical sites and the European convention on the protection of the archaeological heritage.
“The ministry of culture has no feasible plans on how to move and protect the historical monuments,” Cano said. “They are not even sure which monuments will be relocated. If the assessment report is written to international preservation standards, the Ilisu dam project will be scrapped.”
James Watson — the Nobel laureate co-credited with the pivotal discovery of DNA’s double-helix structure, but whose career was later tainted by his repeated racist remarks — has died, his former lab said on Friday. He was 97. The eminent biologist died on Thursday in hospice care on Long Island in New York, announced the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he was based for much of his career. Watson became among the 20th century’s most storied scientists for his 1953 breakthrough discovery of the double helix with researcher partner Francis Crick. Along with Crick and Maurice Wilkins, he shared the
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
RUBBER STAMP? The latest legislative session was the most productive in the number of bills passed, but critics attributed it to a lack of dissenting voices On their last day at work, Hong Kong’s lawmakers — the first batch chosen under Beijing’s mantra of “patriots administering Hong Kong” — posed for group pictures, celebrating a job well done after four years of opposition-free politics. However, despite their smiles, about one-third of the Legislative Council will not seek another term in next month’s election, with the self-described non-establishment figure Tik Chi-yuen (狄志遠) being among those bowing out. “It used to be that [the legislature] had the benefit of free expression... Now it is more uniform. There are multiple voices, but they are not diverse enough,” Tik said, comparing it
TOWERING FIGURE: To Republicans she was emblematic of the excesses of the liberal elite, but lawmakers admired her ability to corral her caucus through difficult votes Nancy Pelosi, a towering figure in US politics, a leading foe of US President Donald Trump and the first woman to serve as US House of Representatives speaker, on Thursday announced that she would step down at the next election. Admired as a master strategist with a no-nonsense leadership style that delivered for her party, the 85-year-old Democrat shepherded historic legislation through the US Congress as she navigated a bitter partisan divide. In later years, she was a fierce adversary of Trump, twice leading his impeachment and stunning Washington in 2020 when she ripped up a copy of his speech to the
RSS