In blazing sunshine, I drive towards the Keban Dam, the starting point of a journey along the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, whose abundant waters catalyze both lusts and tensions in the region. These rivers irrigate much of South-Eastern Anatolia, before crossing into both Syrian and Iraqi territories.

The rivers, which flow without taking borders into account, create a situation of interdependence between these countries. Turkey, home to both rivers’ sources, is highly dependent upon the energy industry, and has sought – since the 1960s – to take advantage of the incredible potential of these waters.

Thus the “GAP” project was born. The Güneydoğu Anadolu Projesi, or Southeastern Anatolia Project, consisted of the construction of 22 dams (19 of which were to be coupled with hydroelectric power stations) and promised the irrigation of 1,800,000 hectares of formerly arid land. GAP covers eight provinces: Adıyaman, Batman, Diyarbakır, Gaziantep, Siirt, Şanliurfa, Mardin and Şırnak, all located in the basins of the Euphrates and Tigris.

The project nominally aims at the development of a poor and underdeveloped region, at the initiation of a revitalization of its economic and social life. GAP’s political aspect is less explicit, but very real: it is also about the further integration of this vast, Kurdish majority territory, into the state of Turkey.

Until now, the project had seemed both familiar and distant to me. It is the pride of a whole segment of the Turkish population, we studied its myriad benefits during geography classes until I was in high school. Yet I have been to South East Anatolia many times, and never documented the region from this perspective.