A city goes under

satellite images show how the water rises. First, there is only a blue line of the Tigris, a mighty river on the earth, and All of a spiral Doodle. That was on 19. July. Five days later, the line is wide, with bulges like a swollen vein. The water is running onto Hasankeyf, to the medieval Treasury of the Tigris, it is swallowed. Hasankeyf, which is almost 12'000 years of civilization, so long as the banks of the Tigris were settled here continuously, say archaeologists.

culture and nature conservationists have protested in the past 15 years in Turkey and far beyond against the construction of the Ilisu dam to turn the river Tigris 130 km length in a lake. The protests have delayed the project repeatedly, have prevented it. Their biggest success celebrated the activists for Hasankeyf and the Tigristal 2009, as Switzerland, Germany and Austria, export credit guarantees withdrew. After that, several banks, including UBS, which was afraid of their "Reputation" respectively. Ankara but found new Financiers and engineers, primarily in their own country.

In the last weeks there was quite a lot of doom and tourism. The souvenir shops in Hasankeyf experienced a visitor boom. Now is the end of it, the last of the approximately 3000 residents need to go. In the wider area, tens of thousands of people to lose their ancestral villages. For the people of Hasankeyf, the state-owned construction company Toki on the other side of the valley has been built on a higher altitude, dust, dry level, a retort city. The school in the old city has been closed, so many families are already moved in advance, and some complained of construction defects in new houses, and that for the first time, no water flowed from the pipes – for the people fleeing the water. Many have also reburied their dead, to the cemetery in Neuhasankeyf.

"barbarism of the 21st century. Century"

demonstrations are now prohibited, the access roads blocked, let the Governor know. To Neustadt an "archaeological Park", in half-a-dozen of the impressive medieval monuments on Huge semi-trailers were transported: a tomb from the 15th century. Century, a bathhouse, a minaret. Other monuments will be submerged, hundreds of values to protect the artifacts, say activists.

In the Turkish media is already touted the underwater Paradise of Hasankeyf for "diving tourists" and the lake for jet ski Fans. "Yes, this is like Hawaii here," Firat Argun. He was the last one rented in Hasankeyf still room to tourists. For years he has fought against the dam, together with Celebrities such as the Nobel laureate in literature Orhan Pamuk and the Turkish Popstar Tarkan.

in 2013 you had. even the environmentalist from the Amazon region and from Africa to the guest They wanted to show that the giant power plant of Belo Monte in Brazil, the dams on the Turkanasee in Kenya and Ilisu are all the same "dam-mad", as it was then Ulrich Eichelmann said. The German environmentalists led the way for the WWF, and later for his organization Riverwatch long international campaign against the dam. Ulrich Eichelmann is once again, "goodbye", as he says, to the Tigris traveled. A "barbarism of the 21st century. Century," he calls the flooding.

The government sees it differently. For them, the dam's progress, Turkey is an energy poor country. The first part of the project plans come from the 50s of the last century, until the end of the 90s, it was concrete, in the context of the CAP project.

In the cave

GAP is "Güneydogu Anadolu Projesi", the southeastern Anatolia project, a network of dams along the rivers Euphrates and Tigris. Water is also a means of Power. Flows less water due to the Tigris and the Euphrates, because it is jammed in the Turkey, feel the the neighbors in Syria and in Iraq. The Euphrates now is because of the many Dams in Turkey and also in Syria much less water than in the past. Several environmentalists fear that the dam on the Tigris the Mesopotamian marshes in southern Iraq, the Eden fabled biblical garden could be in danger.

Because the area is inhabited by Hasankeyf, especially of Kurds, it was called once, with the dam as a barrier against the fighters of the Kurdish PKK should arise. You didn't want to, that you can draw in the many caves in the rock city. The caves have now been sealed so that no water penetrates into the mountain, and it crumbles.

mayor Abdulvahap Kusen in Hasankeyf born, was pulled out of Protest for a while, even in one of the caves. He says that without public pressure it would not have saved so many monuments. Kusen has arranged. He praises now, that there are in the Neustadt, a hospital, and is a member of the AKP, the party of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Also was once an opponent of the project, the have invented his predecessor – but that was a long time ago.

The Turkish critics had also contacted the European court of human rights. But she left in February off. From the European Convention on human rights, no right of the Individual to protection of certain cultural goods derive, so the reasoning of the judge. For this decision was the dish used for 13 years.

Created: 30.10.2019, 18:54 PM