The Silopi Dam is a gravity dam on the Hezil River about northeast of

Silopi Silopi ( ku, Silopî) is a city and district of Şırnak Province in Turkey's Southeastern Anatolia Region, close to the borders of Iraq and Syria. The majority of its people are of ethnic Kurds. The district, composed of Silopi center, thre ...

Şırnak Province Şırnak Province ( tr, Şırnak ili, ku, Parêzgeha Şirnexê) is a province of Turkey in the Southeastern Anatolia Region. Şırnak Province was created in 1990, with areas that were formerly part of the Siirt and Mardin Provinces. It borders ...

, southeast

Turkey Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a list of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolia, Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with ...

. Under contract from Turkey's

State Hydraulic Works The State Hydraulic Works ( tr, Devlet Su İşleri) is a state agency, under the Ministry of Environment and Forestry of Turkey, responsible for the utilization of all the country's water resources. The institution's four major functions are ener ...

, İLCİ Holding A.Ş began construction on the dam in 2008 and it was completed in November 2012. The reported purpose of the dam is water storage for drinking supply and it can also support a 2.4 MW hydroelectric power station in the future. In January 2013 a project to deliver water from the dam through of pipes to a water treatment plant Silopi began. The pipeline is expected to be complete in 2014 and the water treatment should be operational in 2015. Another purpose of the dam which has been widely report in the Turkish press is to reduce the freedom of movement of

Kurdistan Workers' Party The Kurdistan Workers' Party or PKK is a Kurdish militant political organization and armed guerrilla movement, which historically operated throughout Kurdistan, but is now primarily based in the mountainous Kurdish-majority regions of sou ...

(PKK) militants. Blocking and flooding valleys in close proximity to the Iraq–Turkey border is expected to help curb cross-border PKK smuggling and deny caves to which ammunition can be stored in. A total of 11 dams along the border; seven in Şırnak Province and four in

Hakkâri Province Hakkâri Province (, tr, Hakkâri ili, ku, Parêzgeha Colemêrgê), is a province in the southeast of Turkey. The administrative centre is the city of Hakkâri. The province covers an area of 7,121 km² and had a population of 286,470 in 2 ...

were implemented for this purpose. In Şırnak they are the Şırnak Dam upstream of the Silopi Dam on the Ortasu River and further upstream is the Uludere, Balli, Kavşaktepe, Musatepe and Çetintepe Dams also on the Ortasu River. In Hakkari are the Gölgeliyamaç (since cancelled) and Çocuktepe Dams on the Güzeldere River and the Aslandağ and Beyyurdu Dams on the Bembo River.

References

{{Dams and reservoirs in Turkey Dams in Şırnak Province Gravity dams Dams completed in 2012 Dams in the Tigris River basin Roller-compacted concrete dams

See also

References