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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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