Every day the water rises by about a meter. Residents see how their city is sinking, their old houses are lost in the water, like bridges, only the tops are visible from the minarets. Polichin in the Turkish Black Sea, Artvin province, is swallowed up by the river.

The Yusufeli Dam, Turkey’s tallest to date, is to produce hydroelectric power to meet the needs of about 2.5 million people or 750,000 Togg cars, Turkey’s first domestic and all-electric vehicle, the Turkish president said. . However, this uproots another 7,500 people, and this is only from Yusufeli.

Yusufeli Barajı’nda su vysivı 106 metersyi aştı? eski ilche son kez bactularhttps://t.co/yfHmZyvExK pic.twitter.com/uOTDBfp7oh

— Demiroren Haber Ajansi (@dhainternet) April 12, 2023

As expected, not only human lives were affected. The area’s biodiversity has been disrupted as the hydroelectric dam affects 70 plant species that grow in the area. Environmentalists, activists and local residents have attracted attention for many years, but the economic and energy benefits of the project have come to the fore.

In addition, Turkey, according to its Ministry of Foreign Affairs, is obliged to import about 75% of its energy needs, while at the same time it says it wants to become an energy hub for the wider region. Something that’s proven completion of construction of nuclear facilities in Akugiu.

In November last year, Recep Tayyip Erdogan opened the Yusufeli dam and hydroelectric power plant. According to Turkish publications, it is “the first in our country with a height of 275 meters and ranks fifth in its category in the world.” He stated, among other things, that the billions of kilowatt-hours to be produced at said dam would bring about $260 million to the Turkish economy.

“Despite the fact that there is a shortage of energy in our country, from here we will cover our energy needs for a year and a half,” he added.

The city that was uprooted seven times

Surrounded by rocky mountains, with Turkey’s fastest river, the Çoruh, running through a narrow valley and the Yusufeli on its banks, the area has long been considered a suitable site for a dam, with initial studies of a potential project dating back to the 1970s. It is reported by Foreign Policy. The master plan for the development of hydropower on the Tsorukh River was drawn up in the 1980s, the foundation of the dam was finally laid in 2013. As characteristically stated in the same publication, the foundations of rural life were undermined.

And since last fall, according to the Daily Sabah, Yusufeli residents have been changing their lives by moving into new homes and shops. This is the seventh case in the history of the village, when residents were forced to leave their homes. Yusufeli has been renamed over the decades and its city center has moved into the Ottoman era and the early years of Turkey. It finally received its current status of a district of the Artvin region in 1950, and the city center was moved to its current location – the one that is now being transferred again.

Turkish City Swallowed by Rising Reservoir – 16 photos of the town of Yusufeli in northeastern Turkey as the water begins to rise behind a huge new dam on the Coruh River, slowly flooding homes, shops, mosques and more. https://t.co/0ogs3adSAd pic.twitter.com/ph7BCfVBzX

— Atlantic Photo (@TheAtlPhoto) April 10, 2023

Fatih Yedikli, a resident of Yusufeli, told Hürriyet that the relocation would cause the city to “lose its soul”. “We managed to become a city in 50 years. Our new settlement cannot achieve this in 100 years.”

The new town, the report says, consists of more than 2,600 homes and 317 businesses for Yusufeli, as well as 520 homes and five shops for residents of seven other villages in the area. The new city has playgrounds, shopping malls and schools, and residents will live free for the next five years.

The cost of the project, which includes, in addition to the village, 46 tunnels and 23 bridges and viaducts, as well as about 110 km of new roads, is about $2 billion.

“Sterile and monotonous”

According to Foreign Policy, residents find everything … sterile and monotonous, a far cry from the now half-flooded city of rich rice paddies, lush farmland, fruit trees and the once bustling tourism industry that attracted white water rafting enthusiasts. And they are trying to balance between the necessary uprooting – with the disappearance of their property and memories – and the economic development that the project promises.

As the locals said, “We leave our memories here… they will drown,” Necmetin Taskin told Anadolu news agency.

Suya emballen ilçeye son taksari… Those who witnessed the burial of Yusufeli, who was moved 7 times in his 153-year history, doup büyükleri yeri son kez remote izliyorhttps://t.co/qCmiDz8O8n pic.twitter.com/1MvVwIjqF2

— Demiroren Haber Ajansi (@dhainternet) April 4, 2023

“It’s a bit like Venice these days. Soon all this will disappear. We didn’t want to move or see our family break up, but the choice was not ours,” said Dila Gigit, who spoke in Foreign Policy magazine about a lottery system through which apartments were allocated randomly to each family. “We lived with my grandmother. Now he is on the other side of the city, and we hardly see him. She feels lonely,” she said.

“We have a great time here eating on balconies and terraces. We won’t have any of this in new settlements, in new apartment buildings,” Guluzar Yuksel, 86, told Hürriyet.

optimists

Some are more optimistic. “It will be a slow process, but I believe it will become a wonderful city,” Hussain Aydin told the Daily Sabah. “In addition, we will also have a lake landscape,” he added. “I am proud of the state, what it has done here. The workers almost cut the mountain to create low ground so that we could move,” said Ali Balchi.

Yousufeli Mayor Egip Aytekin told Hürriyet that “3,180 people have applied for new housing so far. A settlement is being built, designed for approximately 10,000 people.

Aytekin reported in the same newspaper that “we evaluate cities that have already been resettled for similar reasons, so as not to make the same mistakes here. We have been to Hasankeyf four times,” referring to the southeastern ancient city that will soon be completely inundated by the flood waters of the Ilisos dam and whose inhabitants have already been displaced.

A photograph taken on April 4, 2022 shows pillars and buildings in the rising water of an artificial lake that gradually floods the village of Yusufeli, holding back the flow of the Koruh River (also called Chorokhi) in Artvin province to the northeast. Türkiye. pic.twitter.com/pnoRAMAnUi

— Yasin Akgul (@yasinnakgul) April 6, 2023

Mayor Yusufeli has said in his statements for 14 years, Milliet: “When I saw that the adventure with the dam was inevitable, I experienced emotions to the fullest. But I did not have enough mental space, I needed to find time to do new things and satisfy new needs, and not remember the old ones. We have no room for tears over the epics of the past. It is more important to build a foundation than to cry about the past.”

However, according to Hürriyet, the program was launched in time to record the city before it disappears. All streets of the city center, as well as nearby villages, are filmed by all-round cameras both from the ground and from the air. Thus, even years later, the residents of Yusufeli will be able to virtually visit their old city. As part of the same project, a city museum will be created in the new village.

Saving the animal and plant world

Meanwhile, efforts to save the animals have not stopped for several months, as the water level has been rising since November last year. According to Turkish reports, volunteers who came to the area from all over Turkey and supported the rescue of many living organisms under the rubble in the earthquake area, simultaneously reached hard-to-reach places by boats, accompanied by rafting athletes, and rescued almost 20 animals, such as small snakes, as well as only that gave birth to cats and dogs. In an area where aquatic animals that find it difficult to live in the waters of the dam are being rescued, they are treated and checked by volunteer veterinarians, and the locals feed them.

In fact, as Mehmet Tigoglu, president of Nazilli Association for Animal Rights and Nature, stated, “with our canoeing and rafting athletes, we are rescuing animals trapped in boats. Unfortunately, there are too many animals stuck here. The cats suffered a lot. There are also cats that give birth inside buildings. Our volunteers and veterinarians who are professionally trained in animal search and rescue from different regions of Turkey are here and we will save all our creatures in this region.”

#Turkey
Yusufeli, a city slowly flooded by the rising waters of the dam.
📷@yasinnakgul#AFP pic.twitter.com/YEiN3RGaz4

— AFP Photo (@AFPphoto) April 7, 2023

In total, volunteers, kayakers and rafters have managed to save almost 1,000 animals, and rescue efforts are continuing in full force to save the rest.

At the same time, according to the Daily Sabah, under the coordination of the Association for the Protection and Protection of Animals, Nature and People (HAYDİKO), volunteers are working to relocate homeless animals to safer areas.

The General Directorate of State Hydraulic Structures (GGS), which actually supervised the work, also relocated 5,844 fruit trees, mainly olives, mulberries, walnuts and pomegranates, and in addition planted another 77,000 trees.

Hydroelectric power plants in Turkey

Turkey has about 750 hydroelectric power plants and aims to cover about 20% of its electricity needs in this way. “The country ranks second in Europe and ninth in the world in terms of installed hydropower capacity,” Turkish Energy Minister Fatih Donmez said, saying he was proud that the design and construction of the critical components of the hydropower plant … were done in Turkey.

According to the construction company, the total storage capacity of the dam is about 2.2 billion cubic meters. The plant with a design installed capacity of 558 MW will produce 1.888 billion kWh of energy per year.

Details from wall temperature to water load can be calculated using more than 4,000 measurement devices in and around the Yusufeli dam body. Thanks to its seismic devices, the dam can also measure the depth and strength of earthquakes in its immediate vicinity.

It is worth noting that 7,000 people were employed in the construction of the dam and more than 250 engineers worked day and night.