Atatürk Dam


The Atatürk Dam, originally the Karababa Dam, is a zoned rock-fill dam with a central core on the Euphrates River on the border of Adıyaman Province and Şanlıurfa Province in the Southeastern Anatolia Region of Turkey. Built both to generate electricity and to irrigate the plains in the region, it was renamed in honour of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Turkish Republic. The construction began in 1983 and was completed in 1990. The dam and the hydroelectric power plant, which went into service after the upfilling of the reservoir was completed in 1992, are operated by the State Hydraulic Works. The reservoir created behind the dam, called Lake Atatürk Dam, is the third largest in Turkey.
The dam is situated northwest of Bozova, Şanlıurfa Province, on state road D-875 from Bozova to Adıyaman. Centerpiece of the 22 dams on the Euphrates and the Tigris, which comprise the integrated, multi-sector, Southeastern Anatolia Project, it is one of the world's largest dams. The Atatürk Dam, one of the five operational dams on the Euphrates as of 2008, was preceded by Keban and Karakaya dams upstream and followed by Birecik and the Karkamış dams downstream. Two more dams on the river have been under construction.
The dam embankment is and. The hydroelectric power plant has a total installed power capacity of 2,400 MW and generates 8,900 GW·h electricity annually.
The total cost of the dam project was about.
The dam was depicted on the reverse of the Turkish one-million-lira banknotes of 1995–2005 and of the 1 new lira banknote of 2005–2009.

Dam

The initial development project for the southeastern region of Turkey was presented in 1970. As the objectives for regional development have changed significantly and the ambitions have grown in the 1970s, the original plan underwent major modifications. The most important change in the project was abandoning the Middle Karababa Dam design, and adopting the design of the Atatürk Dam to increase the storage and power generation capacities of the dam.
Dolsar Engineering and ATA Construction, two prominent Turkish companies, signed for the building of the dam. The construction of the cofferdam began in 1985 and was completed in 1987. The fill work for the main dam lasted from 1987 to 1990. The Atatürk Dam, listed in international construction publications as the world's largest construction site, was completed in a world record time of around 50 months.
The rock-fill dam undergoes deformations that are regularly and systematically monitored since 1990 with different types of sensors. It is estimated that the central portion of the dam crest has settled by around since the end of the construction. Settlement of the dam crest up to has been measured since the start of the detailed geodetic monitoring in 1992. The maximum horizontal deformation measured is about.
The permeation grouting work was carried out by subcontractor Solétanche Bachy and the rehabilitation work for the post-tensioning of the dam crest with ground anchors by Vorspann System Losinger International.

Hydroelectric power plant

The HEPP of the Atatürk Dam is the biggest of a series of 19 power plants of the GAP project. It consists of eight Francis turbine and generator groups of 300 MW each, supplied by Sulzer Escher Wyss and ABB Asea Brown Boveri respectively. The up to steel pressure pipes with a total weight of 26.600 tons were supplied and installed by the German NOELL company. The power plant's first two power units came on line in 1992 and it became fully operational in December 1993. The HEPP can generate 8,900 GWh of electricity annually. Its capacity makes up around one third of the total capacity of the GAP project.
During the periods of low demand for electricity, only one of the eight units of the HEPP is in operation while in times of high demand, all the eight units are in operation. Hence, depending upon the energy demand and the state of the interconnected system, the amount of water to be released from the HEPP might vary between 200 and 2,000 m3/s in one day.

Irrigation

Originating in the mountains of eastern Anatolia and flowing southwards to Syria and Iraq, the Euphrates and the Tigris are very irregular rivers, used to cause great problems each year with droughts in summer and flooding in winter. The water of the Euphrates River is regulated by means of large reservoirs of the Keban and Atatürk Dams. However, the waters released from the HEPPs of those dams also need to be regulated. The Birecik and the Karkamış Dams downstream the Atatürk Dam are constructed for the purpose of harnessing the waters released from large-scale dams and HEPPs.
Nearly of arable land in the Şanlıurfa-Harran and Mardin-Ceylanpınar plains in upper Mesopotamia is being irrigated via gravity-flow with water diverted from the Atatürk Dam through the Şanlıurfa Tunnels system, which consists of two parallel tunnels, each long and in diameter. The flow rate of water through the tunnels is about, which makes one-third of the total flow of the Euphrates. The tunnels are the largest in the world, in terms of length and flow rate, built for irrigation purposes. The first tunnel was completed in 1995 and the other in 1996. The reservoir behind the dam will irrigate another 406,000 ha by pumping for a total of 882,000 ha.
The Atatürk Dam and the Şanlıurfa Tunnel system are two major components of the GAP project. Irrigation started in the Harran Plain in the spring of 1995. The impact of the irrigation on the economy of the region is significant. In ninety percent of the irrigated area, cotton is planted. Irrigation expansion within the Harran plains also increased Southeastern Anatolia's cotton production from 164,000 to 400,000 metric tons in 2001, or nearly sixty percent. With almost 50% share of the country's cotton production, the region developed to the leader in Turkey.

Reservoir lake

The reservoir Lake Atatürk Dam, extending over an area of with a water volume of 48.7 km3, ranks third in size in Turkey after Lake Van and Lake Tuz. The reservoir water level touched amsl in 1994. Since then, it varies between 526 and 537 m amsl. The full reservoir level is, and the minimum operation level is amsl.
Some 10 towns and 156 villages of three provinces are located around the Lake Atatürk Dam. The lake provides a fisheries and recreation site. For transportation purposes, several ferries have been operated in the reservoir. The reservoir lake is called "sea" by local people.

Fishery

Atatürk Dam Lake is an abundant source of food for local people and also provides opportunities for recreational fishing. In 1992, around 200,000 young fish, propagated in DSI's Atatürk Fish Hatchery, were introduced into the reservoir. Since then, the figure of fingerlings stocked into the lake reached around 33 million.
Commercially fishing in the reservoir developed to a catch of around annually 1,000 tons of some fish species with a market value of US$1.26 million. 8 of the 12 fish species being caught are economically valuable. In addition, the lake has a potential for cage culture of 7,000 tons/year worth of US$14 million.
With the aim of utilizing the fishing potential and creating jobs for the lakeside populations, the reservoir is zoned to 21 fishing sectors, each one having a water products cooperative. Considering all aspects of fishery activities, the reservoir contributes in total US$15 million to GNP and generates employment for 1,600 people.

Recreation and sports

In order to open the region to tourism, to introduce modern sports to the local people and to integrate the social and economic progress taking place in the region with sports as a drive, a water sports festival was established in 1994, which takes place each year in September. The young people in the region developed an interest in water sports and started to take part in international contests in the branches of sailing, rowing-canoeing, swimming and diving on the Lake Atatürk Dam.
Furthermore, International Atatürk Dam Sailing Competition takes place every year in October on the lake.

Resettlement and salvaging cultural heritage

With the forming of the reservoir lake, more than a hundred hamlets and villages were inundated and about 55,000 people were forced to relocate, many of them resettling in nearby communities. According to other sources, the construction of the dam resulted in involuntary resettlement of between 45,000 to 53,500 people.
In 1989, the old town of Samosata, capital of the ancient Commagene kingdom located in Adıyaman Province was flooded behind the Atatürk Dam. A new town with the same name, Samsat, was founded for the 2,000 people dislocated.
The birthplace of the Ancient Greek poet Lucian was lost when the dam was created.
Since the entire GAP area was home to early civilization of the Hittites and the site of Nevalı Çori, and therefore rich in terms of historical remains, the cultural heritage of the region was a concern. The subject of salvaging cultural heritages gained importance, particularly after the inundation of Samsat.
The early Neolithic settlement of Nevalı Çori, site of some of the world's most ancient known temples and monumental sculpture, was discovered during rescue excavations before the dam was completed. Nevalı Çori was inundated by Atatürk Dam's reservoir.

Geostrategic importance

About 90% of Euphrates' total annual flow originates in Turkey, while the remaining part is added in Syria, but nothing is contributed further downstream in Iraq. In general, the stream varies greatly in its flow from season to season and year to year. As an example, the annual flow at the border with Syria ranged from in 1961 to in 1963.
One of the most important legal texts on the waters of the Euphrates-Tigris river system is the protocol annexed to the 1946 Treaty of Friendship and Good Neighborly Relations between Iraq and Turkey. The protocol provided the control and management of the Euphrates and the Tigris depending to a large extent on the regulations of flow in Turkish source areas. Turkey agreed to begin monitoring the two border-crossing rivers and to share related data with Iraq. In 1980, Turkey and Iraq further specified the nature of the earlier protocol by forming a joint committee on technical issues, which Syria joined later in 1982 as well. Turkey unilaterally guaranteed to allow 15.75 km3/year of water across the border to Syria without any formal agreement on the sharing of the Euphrates water.
Mid-January 1990, when the first phase of the dam was completed, Turkey held back the flow of the Euphrates entirely for a month to begin filling up the reservoir. Turkey had notified Syria and Iraq by November 1989 of her decision to fill the reservoir over a period of one month explaining the technical reasons and providing a detailed program for making up for the losses. The downstream neighbors protested vehemently. At this point, the Atatürk Dam has cut the flow from the Euphrates by about a third.
Syria and Iraq claim to be suffering severe water shortages due to the GAP development. Both countries allege that Turkey is intentionally withholding supplies from its downstream neighbors, turning water into a weapon. Turkey denies these claims, and insists it has always supplied its southern neighbors with the promised minimum of. It argues that Iraq and Syria in fact benefit from the regulated water by the dams as they protect all three riparian countries from seasonal droughts and floods.