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Turkey: Ancient Kurdish town revealed at Hasankeyf
Two hundred and sixty miles east of Zeugma, the Turkish village
depicted in the NOVA program "Lost Roman Treasure," lies another
village steeped in Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman history. It is
called Hasankeyf. This ancient Kurdish town is still occupied today,
with some of its residents living in 5,000 cave dwellings carved
more than 2,000 years ago. (Some of the caves now sport satellite
dishes.) Hasankeyf also bears the ruins of two small castles, an
Assyrian-era temple later transformed into a mosque, and a
now-dilapidated 12th-century bridge over the Tigris that was once
regarded as the grandest in the region. Only two sites have been
explored at Hasankeyf, both in 1991, leaving thousands of years
worth of important structures and artifacts still lying beneath the
village. Excavations at other villages nearby have revealed items
dating as far back as 10,000 B.C.
The Turkish government is proposing to begin construction in 2002 of
the Ilisu hydroelectric dam, which will create a 200-square-mile
reservoir and flood Hasankeyf. (The project is part of Turkey's
multibillion-dollar Southeast Anatolia Dam Project, which includes
no fewer than 22 dams.) The dam will displace roughly 60,000 people
and destroy archeological sites and artifacts not salvaged before
the dam's scheduled completion by 2007. Local non-governmental
organizations and archeologists from Turkey and abroad have actively
protested the dam, while a group of Turkish archeologists has begun
excavations at Hasankeyf.
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