Seyhan Dam & Reservoir Lake

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The Hydro Electric Dam was built in the mid 1950s as the first in a series of development projects funded by the World Bank in Turkey. The dam was an important economic element as agriculture could rely on regular supply of water and industry could grow with abundant electricity. The dam was designed by a United States Engineering firm, which was headquartered in Athens Greece, where its previous projects were done. Thus the design was done by US, Greek and Turkish engineers. The project was approved by prime minister Adanan Menderus and the Turkish project manager was Suleyman Demirel (latter prime minister and president of Turkey). This dam project was completed under cost and in less time than planned (the only one that came in under cost). Steel for the dam came from German mills that were able to offer the lowest price due to subsidies by the US as part of the Marshall Plan.
One of the Turkish engineers on the project was Ilhan Arikoslu, adopted son of General Arikoslu, one of Ataturk's compatriots.

My apologies to Suleyman Bey for not remembering his title at the time of the project (I was very young at the time). The information above is from primary sources involved in the construction of the dam and my personal recollections. I was at the power house of the dam when it was dedicated by opening the gates.

Technical Note: The dam probably has the biggest butterfly valves in the world. They were manufactured in Italy. The reason that they are probably the biggest is that, in retrospect, it is not a good choice at that scale.

Near by: Incirlik AFB, was a US B52 staging base.
Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seyhan_Dam
Nearby cities:
Coordinates:   37°5'24"N   35°17'13"E

Comments

  • Hi, I'm a doctoral student doing research on the dam. Are you in Istanbul or Ankara? I'd love to talk more about it, if you have time: lombj497@newschool.edu Thanks! Joe
This article was last modified 8 years ago