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| The ancient cave-city of Hasankeyf on the Tigris River. Photograph: Alamy |
Hasankeyf
is thought to be one of the oldest continuously inhabited settlements on Earth,
dating as far back as 12,000 years and containing thousands of caves, churches
and tombs.
But this
jewel of human history will soon be lost since most of the settlement is about to be flooded
as part of the highly controversial Ilisu dam project.
Construction
work on the dam and its hydroelectric power plant started in 2006 and Hasankeyf
is now just weeks away from destruction, despite a fight by residents and
environmental campaigners to save it.
The Turkish government has given
residents until 8 October to evacuate.
An attempt
to challenge the project at the European court of human rights on the grounds
that it would damage the country’s cultural heritage was unsuccessful.
On its
completion it will be the fourth biggest dam in Turkey and will generate 4,200
gigawatts hours of electricity annually, but at a huge cost.
The scheme
will flood 199 settlements in the region, thousands of human-made caves and
hundreds of historical and religious sites. Campaigners warn that close to
80,000 people will be displaced.
They also
warn that biodiversity will suffer, and that numerous vulnerable and endangered
species are threatened by the construction of the dam.
Hasankeyf
has been part of many different cultures in its long history, including ancient
Mesopotamia, Byzantium, Arab empires and the Ottoman empire, but Hakan Ozoglu,
a history professor at the University of Central Florida, said there are references
to the town in several ancient texts in different languages such as Assyrian,
Armenian, Kurdish, Arab.
The
professor says Hasankeyf is a laboratory that could provide many answers about
the past. “Such rare physical evidence of the human past must be protected at
all cost,” Ozoglu said.
Only eight
historical monuments – including a tower from what was said to be the oldest
university in the world, half of an old Roman gate to the city and a
women’s hamam dating to around 1400 – have been saved from
Hasankeyf. The pieces were moved 3km away and now stand on a vast plain.
With the
deadline handed down by the government, people from the surrounding areas have
come to say farewell to the historical site, knowing it will be their last
chance to see it.
Few
tourists visit the area, however, due to its inaccessibility.
Ozoglu said
the benefit from the dam cannot come close to that of the potential of tourism
that would be better marketed if it had Unesco’s name attached to it.
“I cannot
see very many other places on Earth that deserve more to be on the list of
Unesco’s protected sites,” Ozoglu said.
The
government has built a “new Hasankeyf” for 700 households, 3km away from
historical Hasankeyf, to relocate residents before 8 October. But Eyup Agalday,
27, said he and his wife were not offered their own home in the new settlement,
as the government has a cutoff for those married after 2014. “I will have to
live with my parents again– the whole family of 10 members will be in the one
house,” he said.
Agalday,
like his ancestors, is a shepherd, and currently lives in in one of Hasankeyf’s
many caves. He will not be allowed to take his animals to the new village and
has started selling his goats. “I am forced to do something and be in a city
where I don’t want to live,” he said.
Sitting
under the shade of grapevines on the opposite side of the river, Hediye Tapkan,
38, said she had no idea where her family, including five young children, will
go. “We like our place, we make our bread here, we have lots of grapes and figs
which sometimes we sell, our lands are productive,” she said.
As the
residents wait for the floodgates to open and for Hasankeyf to be slowly
submerged by the rising river, they say they will continue to raise their
voices and spread the message of the settlement’s history, even after entry to
it is banned in October.
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| A photo of the old university of Hasankeyf – said to have been the oldest in the world – before it was destroyed in January 2019 ahead of the flooding. Photograph: Courtesy of Eyup Agalda |
From The Guardian (edited)
