Decades-old project gets new deadline

ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News

Turkey has been developing the GAP, a large irrigation project, for long years. AA photo

The Southeastern Anatolia Project (GAP), Turkey’s decades-long multi-sector integrated sustainable regional development project, has been revised to end in 2017 as the deadline for the Ilısu and Silvan dams is 2015, according to the head of the project.

The Cizre dam, also in the region, will be completed in 2017 as well as a part of a build-operate-transfer model undertaken by a private company, GAP Regional Development Directorate President Sadrettin Karahocagil told Anatolia news agency.

The revised plan also includes irrigation canals that will carry water to fields from the main lines, he added.

The region is attracting great interest from investors, and industrial zones there are failing to meet the rising demand, he said.

The GAP was originally planned in the 1970s, consisting of irrigation and energy projects on the Euphrates and Tigris, and has been reshaped multiple times.

Archaeologists are working to protect the areas in and around the Ilısu River that would otherwise be submerged after the construction of the controversial Ilısu Dam.