ANKARA - The Southeastern Anatolia Project (GAP), known as Turkey`s and world`s largest integrated development project, is set to restart.
Turkish government plans to allocate 2.3 billion YTL this year and 3.6 billion YTL next year for the project, which has the food potential to feed Turkey and the region.(1 YTL equals 1.25 USD)
The government aims to complete the project in 5 years and has been working on details of the project over the past six months. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is expected to announce an action plan on the project in southeastern province of Diyarbakir on Tuesday.
1.9 million hectares of agricultural land can not be irrigated in the region which was home to many civilizations in history, officials said. The priority of government`s new action plan on the project is expected to be announced as irrigation, experts said.
The project will not only increase agricultural production in the region, but also provide employment for almost 4 million people, nearly half of the population in the region.
Government`s target is to increase the income level five times in the project area which covers 9 provinces Adiyaman, Batman, Diyarbakir, Gaziantep, Kilis, Mardin, Siirt, Sanliurfa and Sirnak, in the basins of the Euphrates and Tigris and in Upper Mesopotamia.
The GAP had originally been planned in the 1970s consisting of projects for irrigation and hydraulic energy production on the Euphrates and Tigris, but transformed into a multi-sector social and economic development program for the region in the 1980s. The development program encompasses such sectors as irrigation, hydraulic energy, agriculture, rural and urban infrastructure, forestry, education and health. The water resources development component of the program envisages the construction of 22 dams and 19 hydraulic power plants and irrigation of 1.82 million hectares of land.
(TÇ-GC)