At the start of 2023, the research team at DEU DESUM organized a fact-finding mission to Lake Marmara. During this visit, it was ascertained that the former lake had dried up and been invaded by local communities to turn the area into agricultural lands.
Abandoned fishing boats (left) whence fishing was a source of income for the locals of Sazkoy, the old cemetery of Sazkoy (rigth) re-emerged soon after Lake Marmara dried out (photos taken on 8th February 2023)
This calamity – the loss of a wetland of international repute for its rich biodiversity – had caused significant friction and disputes among the parties involved, not least with the fishermen who had been depending on catches of lake fish to sustain their livelihoods.
Rather than viewing this as a major setback, the fact-finding mission to Lake Marmara brought a new impetus for DEU DESUM to help resolve the conflicting water demands and, not least, to explore novel ways to restore the lake, or at least a substantial part of it to its former glory.
From the very outset, the ambition of DEU DESUM to address the Lake Marmara’s land and water degradation challenges had been to design and develop an eco-engineering solution in the form of a dynamic water allocation tool. Clearly, the water demands in the environs of the lake are of a both a temporal and spatial nature. Aside from a seasonal agricultural demand, also the sanitary water needs of the urban settlements in the area would need to served. Moreover, for the lake to be restored and its habitat to be returned to a good ecological status would require to establish and maintain a minimum environmental flow.
The original idea was for DEU DESUM to first gain an in-depth understanding of the water allocation problematic through the organization of a roundtable with all parties concerned, consequently to build up and evaluate possible (future) allocation scenarios through the use of numerical modeling, and finally to present the outcomes once again to all the relevant entities concerned so as to reach an informed, scientifically based, consensus on the optimal way forward.
Yet, the fact-finding mission to Lake Marmara immediately convinced Dr. Cem Polat Cetinkaya, DEU DESUM’s Team Leader, that amidst a growing water conflict which had already escalated into litigation actions and a country-wide election on the horizon, inviting all water stakeholders to a roundtable discussion was simply not a viable option, as such an event could well add the proverbial ‘oil to the fire’.
In lieu, he refocused the scope of the fact-finding mission to find out more about the reasons that led to the drying out of the lake. He wishes to share these findings in this latest chapter of Mara-Mediterra’s Journey.
Dr. Cem Polat Cetinkaya learned that to address the situation, the Manisa Governorate and the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry took a number of decisions. Yet these decisions proved to have been made with no prior consultation with the municipality, nor with the irrigation association or the local farmers. These decisions, as well as several interventions on the ground caused an already aggravated situation to worsen further.
The decisions and interventions are documented in a protocol signed in January 2023 by the Manisa Governorate, and General Directorate of Nature Conservation and Natural Parks (DKMP) together with the General Directorate of Agricultural Enterprises (TIGEM) within the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. Based on this protocol, it is decided that the lands marked in green in the map below will be used by TIGEM for organic agricultural practices, while the blue area will be conserved as a lake area by DKMP. Finally, the area shown in red is earmarked as a sensitive conservation zone which is to be restored.
Partitioning of Lake Marmara
The State Hydraulic Works (DSI), the responsible institution for the conservation of Lake Marmara before the protocol was signed, has been relegated to a “side” institution as it is mentioned only in relation to provide support for the realization of the protocol. Dr. Cem Polat Cetinkaya asserts that in adopting this approach, the most important tool available to restore the lake, i.e. the DSI, had been by-passed and through the protocol, a new status-quo had been established which neglects the needs and expectations of the farmers, the irrigation association, and the municipality.
Originally, the protocol was filed as a petition by the Doga Association (NGO) and some farmers, who claim that the lake must be restored as a whole and therefore the water required must be converted to the lake as previously. However, this renders everything more complex; there simply is no water to be converted as before! This materialized due to the construction of the Gordes dam which is losing the water stored due to leakages from the bottom of the reservoir.
Following on this understanding of the complexity on the ground, the team at DEU DESUM opted to organize a series of individual meetings with the parties concerned, from which they learned the following:
State Hydraulic Works (DSI): is fully aware that the lake needs water for its conservation (and now restoration) but cannot allocate any water in the present configuration. DSI maintains that the situation is critical, with every party involved suing each other and none of the parties willing to join in a roundtable discussion as yet, and certainly not before the elections that are scheduled to take place in May 2023. DSI does not subscribe to the content of the protocol but it has no sanction power. In particular, DSI is not in agreement with having agricultural practices in any part of the lake area. In their expert view, the restoration of the lake could be made possible and water could be allocated as previously. Sand quarries in the river bed of the diversion channel of the Gordes dam are pre-empting the direct flow of water to the lake. However, as these sand quarries are operated by the Golmarmara Municipality, DSI indicates that the closure of the quarries and restoration of the diversion channel is a necessity which can be realized only by having the political support of central government.
Coastline of the Marmara Lake, now fully cultivated lake area by TIGEM (left), sand quarries in diversion channel (right) (pictures taken on 8th February 2023)
Golmarmara Municipality is irritated about the situation as well, but acknowledges it makes major profits from the sand quarries which hinder the water flow to the lake. They indicate that although it is a contradiction, this profit helps to provide services to local people for their well-being. TIGEM: is directly managed by the general directorate in Ankara, and has no local branch. Through the protocol they already cultivated winter wheat and barley in the zone and are aiming for organic farming. This creates the opportunity that TIGEM may employ some NbSs and may be inclined to allocate an experimental field. DKMP: has the motivation to follow the mission they undertook according to the protocol but no further comment has been obtained by DEU DESUM to date. Doga Association: claims to be raising awareness and change public opinion before elections. DOGA filed a series of lawsuits, some of which have been finalized, but nonetheless created an annoyance for governmental bodies. From the point of view of Dr. Cem Polat Cetinkaya, at least until elections, it is impossible to have a meeting with DOGA and government officials in the same room without inviting a quarrel. Irrigation Associations: are managed by a bureaucrat assigned directly by DSI, so it means the association toes to the tune of the DSI. It should also be noted that although there has been no change in its name, farmers are no longer involved in the Irrigation Association’s management directly. Farmers: have no idea exactly what is going on, but some of them (especially the ones operating larger farms) tried to invade the area left behind by the dried-out lake.
The president of the Chamber of Agriculture maintains that wildlife has almost completely vanished in the area. He points out that most of the farmers abandoned chemical fertilizers and although farmers tend to prefer drip irrigation, more farmers have ended up practicing agriculture without irrigation. Due to economic reasons, most of the vineyards have been replaced with olive trees. The groundwater table is very close to the surface (8-10 m) so they do not need additional sources of irrigation, on the other hand deeper wells are not possible around the lake area because of boron concentrations. Furthermore, he alerts to the fact that some previously bored deep wells ended up with causing a gas invasion, which in his view were probably methane or natural gas from deeper layers of geologic formation in the area. He agrees that the sand quarries are a major problem and create a dilemma since on the one hand the quarries are a source of prosperity for the municipality, yet the quarries degrade the land and hinder the flow of water to the lake.
DEU DESUM met up with the Chamber of Agriculture (left), the President of the Chamber of Agriculture and Dr. Cem Polat Cetinkaya (right)
The meeting with the Chamber of Agriculture not only proved very cordial, its President assured Dr. Cem Polat Cetinkaya that he would do his utmost to organize a roundtable that would enable the farmers in the areas to ‘make their voices heard’. He not only kept to his word, no less than 89 farmers from the environs of Lake Marmara turned up for a roundtable discussion that was organized to mark World Water Day in 2023.
Group photo of the participants in the Roundtable organized in Golmarmara, Turkey
The previous chapter in Mara-Mediterra’s Journey can be accessed through this link.
