Atatürk Dam is a major dam located on the Euphrates River in southeastern Turkey . It is an earth-and-rock fill dam. Such dams are built largely from clay, rocks, and other material dug out of the nearby ground and compacted. The dam is one of the largest of this type in the world. Completed in 1990, it is named after Mustafa Kemal Atatürk , the founder of modern-day Turkey.
The Atatürk Dam forms a reservoir (artificial lake) that can hold about 40 million acre-feet (50 billion cubic meters) of water. The dam’s water flows into nearby power plants with a capacity of 2,400 megawatts. The water then flows into a vast irrigation network in the Harran Plain and areas nearby.
The dam is part of the Southeastern Anatolia Project, known by its Turkish acronym GAP (which stands for Güneydoğu Anadolu Projesi). When completed, the GAP will include a total of 22 dams and 19 hydroelectric power stations. It will also feature a network of irrigation canals throughout the upper Euphrates and Tigris river basins. These two rivers flow from their sources in Turkey’s mountains down through Syria and Iraq to form the historic region of Mesopotamia . Because the GAP blocks so much water of the Euphrates from flowing into Syria and Iraq, the project has caused tension between these countries and Turkey.
