Category: Articles & Essays
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It’s about time: New article on the Keban Dam
My new article in Journal of European Studies explores how the Keban Dam’s promise of national progress coexisted with construction delays, continuing repair and disrupted futures for displaced villagers.
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A Chance Discovery Below Harput
A municipal worker planting trees below Harput unexpectedly uncovered a monumental relief more than 4,000 years old. The stone, carved with scenes of siege and conquest, reveals an early chapter in the history of the Upper Euphrates—and raises a broader question about how some ancient monuments become global masterpieces while…
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“Protected with the utmost care”
The Ilısu Dam and Hydroelectric Power Plant was officially inaugurated by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on May 19, 2020. Turkey’s fourth-largest dam is part of the Southeast Anatolia Project (Güneydoğu Anadolu Projesi or GAP), a development project implemented in 1984 to improve the economic and social conditions of the…
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Dams in the Munzur Valley: Contested Infrastructures, Sacred Landscapes, and Local ResistanceDams in Munzur Valley
A reflective and contextual examination of the contested dam projects in the Munzur Valley—where ecology, identity, and state power meet in ongoing struggles over rivers and rights.
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“Ne li vir im ne li wê me”
The Zeynel Bey mausoleum, a cylinder-shaped tomb weighing more than 1,000 tons built during the 15th century in Hasankeyf by the Tigris River, was transported a few kilometers away from its original location on 12 May 2017 in anticipation of the Ilisu Dam being built upstream. It was adorned that…
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Between Exposure and Erasure: Arapgir’s Armenian Cemetery
The key was not hard to find. Hidden under a flat stone, he kneeled down to pick it up and unlocked the gate. In front of us, a large plot of land covered with grass, surrounded by a few gray, tall apartment buildings. The parcel looked abandoned with 30 or…
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Digging (Ziyaret) Tepe – A Funeral
Archaeologists often come across ancient human burials during their excavations. It is less often, however, that human burials come across archaeological excavations. This is what happened, however, to one particular funeral procession a few years ago, in the town of Tepe in Southeastern Turkey. The goal here* is, rather than arrive at…
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Scramble for the Past: The Global Fight Over Cultural Heritage
Across Turkey, antiquities are increasingly subject to surveillance, documentation, and legal control. In Istanbul, the Süleymaniye Mosque has introduced security cameras and expanded its guard staff in response to concerns over theft. Manuscripts and architectural elements—previously unregistered Qurʾans and wall tiles in particular—have now been formally inventoried and archived. Beyond…
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Diyarbakır’s New Museum(s)
The southeastern provinces of Turkey will soon be home to a series of new, state-of-the-art, archaeology museums. Such buildings are being (or have already been) planned, constructed, remodeled, or expanded. The Gaziantep Museum, for instance, houses many of the Roman mosaics of Zeugma unearthed before the construction of the Birecik…
