Called before Karababa Dam, the Atatürk dam is on the Euphrates river in Southern Anatolia in Turkey. It is one of the GAP dams and one of the world's largest dams. 
Its construction began in 1963. It opened in 1992.
Its construction began in 1963. It opened in 1992.
The reservoir called Atatürk lake is the third biggest in Turkey (817 km² ; 48,7 km3). 10 towns and 156 villages are around. It’s considered as a “sea” by local population : fishing is developing so there are a lot of ships, leisure
like water sports (swimming, sailing, canoeing...) can be practiced.The creation of the reservoir led to bad consequences :
- hundreds hamlets and villages were inundated, about 50,000 inhabitants were compelled to leave their home,
- the old capital of the ancient Commagene kingdom called Samsat was inundated.
It was built in order to provide electricity and for irrigation.
It is 169m high, 1,820 long ; the hydraulic power plants have got a capacity of 2,400MW per year so 8,900GWh of electricity can be provided.
Irrigation is made by gravity-flow ; there are two parallel tunnels (26 km long and 7,6 m in diameter). It concerns one third of the Euphrates flow. On the irrigated area, cotton's production is increasing.
About Iraq, Syria and Turkey…
- a protocol was annexed to the 1946 Treaty of Friendship and Good Neighbourly Relations between Iraq and Turkey ; Turkey promised to share related data and to allow 15.75 km³/year or 500 m³/s of water arriving to Syria.
- in 1990, Turkey filled up the Atatürk reservoir that cut Euphrates flow to Syria and Iraq during about one month. So both downstream countries were fed up.
- Syria and Iraq blame Turkey for being responsible of many shortages and to turning water into a political weapon
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