Driving along the Silk Road

It looked like any other highway as we were leaving the city of Gaziantep, until I noticed the caravans in the median line.  The statues of loaded camels made me realize that we were actually driving along the old Silk Road.  To get the perspective shifted like this, in a blink of a moment, happens to me all the time while living in Turkey, and it feels like wandering around in the middle of a history book.  

We drove from Gazientep into the ancient Mespotamia, crossing the Euphrates river twice.

The Atatürk Dam on the Euphrates river was completed in 1990, is said to be one of the biggest dams in the world.  It was built to generate electricity and to irrigate the plains in the region.  The water flow in the Euphrates river is very irregular and used to cause big problems with drought in the summer and flooding in the winter.  

The new irrigation system has been very useful to the cotton production in this region.  Turkey is among the biggest cotton producers in the world, and according to Wikipedia, Southeastern Anatolia has because of the Atatürk Dam grown to produce almost 50% of the country's cotton.