Turkey moves bath house to avoid looming flooding

Turkish authorities yesterday conducted a hugely sensitive operation to move a centuries-old bath house weighing 1,600 tonnes to a new location to avoid being engulfed under floodwaters by a controversial dam project.

The Artuklu Hamam bath house in the southeastern town of Hasankeyf was loaded onto a wheeled platform and then moved down a specially constructed road to a new area in a process that took several hours.

Much of Hasankeyf will be under water or risk damage in the next years because of the development of the Ilisu Dam project, which aims to drastically improve energy supplies for the Kurdish-dominated southeast.

The moving of Artuklu Hamam, which is about 650 years old, is the latest transfer of historical building in the area to avoid being buried underwater. In May 2017, Turkey moved the 15th century, 1,100 tonne tomb of Zeynel Bey, a Turkic tribal leader, also on a special platform to avoid being buried by the floodwaters.

Both historic buildings have been moved around two kilometres (over one mile) to an archaeological park being set up just outside the town. Located on the banks of the Tigris river, Hasankeyf is home to a cluster of sites from the Roman, Byzantine, pre-Ottoman and Ottoman eras.