Turkey has set itself the goal of bringing the production of electricity at the HPP to 135 billion kilowatt-hours by 2023, when the centenary of the founding of the Republic of Turkey will be celebrated.
The growth of electricity production at Turkish HPPs over the past 16 years due to the commissioning of dams and hydroelectric power plants "Deriner", "Akkerpu", "Ermenek", "Alpaslan", "Borchka" and "Obruck".
The dam of the Ilisu HPP will be the largest in Turkey, and water from it will be used for irrigation of agricultural land.
Rivers flowing simultaneously through the territory of two or even three states are often the subject of disputes and disagreements among neighbors. In today's world, when the problem of lack of fresh water is becoming more and more acute, many countries are willing to spend huge sums of money just to leave on their territory those precious cubic meters of water that the river carries downstream to the territory of a neighboring state.
Construction of dams and construction of water reservoirs is the legal way to solve their water supply problems, but unfortunately, it leads to conflicts with neighbors.
The grandiose Ilisu Dam, which Turkey has been building since 2006, has already become another apple of discord between the Middle East states. The dam will block the Tigris River in its upper course, 65 kilometers from the border with Iraq, Turkey's southern neighbor. As you have already guessed, Iraq is not at all happy with Turkey's next hydro-building success and is horrified to calculate the losses that await the country in the near future.
The fact is that for Iraq, located in semi-desert and desert climate, the Tigris, along with the Euphrates, is a stable source of fresh water, without which the country's existence is impossible.
The source and the upper course of the Tigris River are located in Turkey. Here, in the Eastern Taurus Mountains, in a lake called Hazar Göl originates the greatest river of the Middle East, which for thousands of years has provided the existence of many civilizations of this semi-desert region. The length of the Turkish and border part of the river is about 455 kilometers, while the remaining 1415 kilometers already flow through Iraq.
Due to the rapidly growing population and increasing demand for electricity, Iraq and Turkey have embarked on a major transformation of the riverbed, building dams and reservoirs. At the same time, Turkey is in a more favorable geostrategic position, having the opportunity to dispose of the upper river at its discretion. At the moment, Turkey already has 2 dams with operating hydroelectric power stations and several more under construction, including the Ilisu HPP, the full completion of which is scheduled for 2022.
The dam under construction has a rock-slab structure reinforced by a reinforced concrete shield. The height of the dam is 135 meters, and its length exceeds 1.8 kilometers. It is planned to install 6 hydraulic turbines with capacity of 200 MW at the future hydro power plant. The total capacity of all turbines of the future Ilisu HPP will be 1200 MW, which is much higher than the capacity of the other two HPPs built by Turkey on the Tigris.
But this dam is of concern not only to Iraqi leaders, but also to historians, environmentalists and many public figures both inside and outside Turkey. The fact is that after the construction of the dam on the river will create the largest reservoir, whose area will be more than 300 square kilometers. Despite the fact that the southeast of the country is considered one of the most sparsely populated, about 200 settlements, including one of the oldest cities in the world - Hasankeife, fall into the flood zone.
Despite the fact that construction of the hydroelectric power plant has not yet been completed, the filling of the reservoir began in the summer of 2018. This was preceded by several stages of intense negotiations between Turkey and Iraq, which proposed a gradual filling, so that the Tiger did not lose all its flow.
However, Iraqi experts recorded a decrease in river flow after Turkey began to fill the reservoir. Instead of the usual 700 cubic meters of water per second, the figure of 390 cubic meters per second was recorded. Water level in the Tigris in the north of Iraq has fallen noticeably, many areas of the bottom were exposed, which has never been observed before.
If you look at a map of Iraq, it seems that the Tigris and the Euphrates with their many tributaries, irrigation canals and reservoirs form a water abundance in the middle of the desert. But this abundance is very shaky. Iraq is becoming hostage to its geographical location, with the upper reaches of two great rivers and almost all of their major tributaries located in neighboring countries. Ironically, the real owners of Iraq's freshwater wealth are Turkey, Syria and Iran. These countries require more and more fresh water every year, and they keep it quite legally.
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