He and a few families were all that remained, picking among the rubble of scores of small stone blockhouses. As archeologists nearby raced to save the remnants of a centuries-old civilization, Kizilirmak and a handful of men tried to rescue their own artifacts, pulling down the last roofs and walls in search of valuable beams and boards. The Southeast Anatolia Project's official mission is to turn a dry, endemically poor and politically unstable region in the Turkish southeast into a national breadbasket, along the way increasing power output by 70 percent and quelling separatist violence in the largely Kurdish area. Five dams, including the centerpiece Ataturk Dam, one of the world's largest, are already operational and there are signs that the project, known by the acronym GAP, is achieving its mandate. Water is being delivered to formerly parched fields.
Farmers tell of six-fold salary increases.
There are Internet cafes, a new Western-style mall and a hotel approaching modern standards on the same dusty streets shared with donkey carts and flocks of sheep. But what in Turkey may look like paradise, in Syria and Iraq appears as a quickly closing tap. Both countries have dire water problems already and believe that GAP is both worsening their plights and limiting their future opportunities. This situation has resulted in immense damages to the various aspects of life in Iraq. And these damages will increase with each new project carried out by Turkey, Iraqi foreign ministry and irrigation officials wrote last year in their government's position paper on the project.