• by IPS Correspondents (urfa, southeast turkey)
• Saturday, November 12, 1994
• Inter Press Service

URFA, Southeast Turkey, Nov 12 (IPS) - Turkish President Suleyman Demirel opened the sluice gates this week of the two controversial 26-kms long Urfa tunnels which are part of the massive South-East Anatolia Project (GAP).

The project is one of the biggest irrigation schemes in the world and includes the huge Ataturk Dam. The GAP project in South- East Turkey has already cost at least 11 billion dollars with only one third of the total project now complete.

Most of the work has taken place on the Euphrates river. Within a decade the GAP project is expected reach a target irrigation area of 4.2 million acres -- more than twice the size of Belgium.

The latest completed tunnels at Urfa will help to irrigate part of the Harran plane along the Syrian border and will immediately benefit 62 villages and 74,000 acres of land.

Meanwhile, Turkey's southern neighbours, especially Syria, are worried that the existing Ataturk and Karakaya dams and the Urfa tunnels in addition to other 20 dams to built on rivers Euphrates and Tigris might result in the restriction of their water resources.

In spite of ongoing talks Damascus has expressed dissatisfaction with the agreed amount of 500 cubic metres per second of water to be released downstream from Turkey.

This week's opening of the sluice gates was not attended by Turkish opposition party leaders who charged the government with exploiting a national achievement for petty interests.

Stating ironically that irrigation season is already closed, Mesut Yilmaz, the main opposition ANAP leader, charges the government with "staging a show with regard to forthcoming partial elections".

Premier Tansu Ciller's senior coalition DYP expects to gain most seats in the southeast in the partial elections in early December. Some 16 out of the 22 vacant seats in the parliament belong to the southeast provinces.

The completed twin Urfa Tunnels will channel 164 cubic metres of water per second to the Harran Plain. Many secondary school students who were obliged to attend the celebrations generally questioned official claims of the likely regional prosperity said to occur because of GAP.

They were sceptical of the official predictions of 20 million dollars of additional income in 1995 in the irrigated areas. "I do not believe it," said a high school student.

© Inter Press Service (2014) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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