Eski Halfeti - previously Halfeti - is by all means a place worth a visit. Located on the east bank of the Euphrates, Eski Halfeti was founded by the Assyrians in 4th century BC and has been continuously inhabited since then. In the 1990s, parts of the village came to be submerged in the rising water levels of the recently constructed Birecik Dam, one of the controversial series of dams and infrastructure projects (known as the Southeast Anatolian Project) built by the Turkish government on the Euphrates and the Tigris. In the process, large number of villagers of Halfeti were resettled in another village about 10km away inland from the present site. The new settlement came to be known as Yeni Halfeti (the New Halfeti), while the partially submerged old village on the bank of the Euphrates is renamed Eski Halfeti (the Old Halfeti).
Although many of the other villages in the same valley were completely submerged under the waterline, parts of Eski Halfeti were allowed to remain dry as to provide a source of livelihood in the form of tourism incomes to the remaining villagers. Nowadays the village is best known as the place where regular boat tours depart for the 2-hour round trip upstreams along the scenic Euphrates valley to the ruins of Rumkale, an impressive hilltop fortress perched atop a rocky peninsula which was formed when the water of the Birecik Dam flooded the surrounding valley and changed the entire landscape.
There are no direct bus connections from either Antep or Urfa to Eski Halfeti. To get to Eski Halfeti by public transport, one needs to take a bus first to the town of Bireck, a busy trading town and an important crossing point on the Euphrates on the main road between Antep and Urfa, then change onto a mini-bus to Yeni Halfeti. If the mini-bus you travel with goes all the way from Birecik to Eski Halfet, good for you. If not, once in Yeni Halfeti, get off at the crossroad junction in the village centre right next to a kebab restaurant, and wait for another mini-bus that will take you down the next 10km of journey to Eski Halfeti.
Being a new village swollen with inhabitants resettled by the Turkish authorites from Eski Halfeti following the completion of the Birecik Dam, Yeni Halfeti has nothing scenic or interesting to offer in terms of tourist sights and is a downright plain-looking place, with ugly concrete match-box buildings and unfinished houses, just like one of those faceless roadside villages you see along the main roads all over the countryside in Turkey.
The village - or what remains of the village - of Eski Halfeti, though, is another story. When the mini-bus from Yeni Halfeti descends along a series of sharp curves down the steep slopes towards the village, the views are truly impressive: a quaint, rural village with honey-coloured sandstone and mud houses somewhat similar to those found in Mardin, flanked by rugged, yellowish hinterlands dotted with the occassional green bushes, and embraced by greenish waters of the Euphrates on two sides.
The whole village was strangely quiet. Perhaps it was because it was already 3.30pm when I arrived, and it was a weekday in winter, and the sun would set before 5pm. There was no tourist in sight - I was the only visitor on the bus, all other passengers were locals living in Eski Halfeti - and the sky was partly thick with dark grey clouds, as though it would rain at any moment. So I hastened my pace and try to cover as much of this village as possible before sunset or the beginning of a Mesopotamian winter rainstorm, whichever came first.
Although the place looks very subdued now, on weekends and during the holiday months in Turkey, Eski Halfeti is fairly busy with domestic tourists coming from nearby cities as well as different parts of Turkey. This village of some 2500 inhabitants attains certain degrees of fame both in Turkey and abroad back in the 1990s, when the image of its partially submerged mosque and a minaret half steeped in water appear in newspapers and magazines all around the world. Since then, this village has come to symbolise the fate of numerous sites of ancient civilisations along the Euphrates valley within Turkey that had been buried under the waters of the dams forever.
What remains of Eski Halfeti are some houses situated on the higher grounds, a school, a police station, a few shops, and a few isolated hamlets close to the village centre, but now completed cut off by the rising water levels and accessible only by boat. Most people who chose to remain behind are older residents, while most of the younger inhabitants I encountered in the centre of the village are dependent on tourism incomes as their main source of livelihood. Following the completion of the Birecik Dam, a new embankment and pier were built along the new waterline to turn the village into some kind of leisure boat-trip centre for the region. Boats can be hired by the hour directly from the owners for the scenic trip upstreams to the Rumkale fortress on top of a rocky peninsula, passing by the ruins of several villages on both sides of the valley submerged by the waters on the way to Rumkale.
I had thought there would be at least one hotel or family-run pensions in the village for tourists who may want to stay overnight in the village, but no hotels or pensions could be found in the centre. Although I saw the advertisement put up by a hotel on the side of the road leading into Eski Halfeti, the place is nowhere in sight, at least not in the centre of the village. According to the website of the Turkish Ministry of Education, there is a teacher's hostel in Eski Halfeti, but again I was not sure if this place indeed exists. So I opted to take the last mini-bus which leaves at 5pm during weekdays in front of the government office in the centre of Eski Halfeti. This bus seems to operate only during the week and serves as the transport bus for government employees working in Eski Halfeti who commute everyday from Birecik to Halfeti. If you are staying at Antep and wish to visit Eski Halfeti on a day-trip, make sure you catch this 5pm bus as it arrives at Bireck about 5.40, which enables you to catch the last mini-bus at 6pm from Birecik to Antep. If you miss this last connection out of Eski Halfeti, you need to pay a hefty sum for a taxi.
Looking at the abandoned mosque partly submerged in the waters, it is difficult to envisage how this place used to look like in the past. Although largely inact, many houses in the higher part of the village unscathed by the rising water levels were no longer inhabited. In spite of the restaurants, tea houses and tour boats that line the pier and the river embankment, the whole place still feels desolate and extremely empty. As soon as the sun begins to set, the streets fall into complete silence, as the few remaining residents hurry back to their homes and the whole village just fades into darkness.
For a few minutes, a slight rain shower came down from the overcasted sky. Under the clouds, the waters of the Euphrates turned into shade of greyish green. With the barren hills and the empty streets, all of a sudden the atmosphere feels extremely intense, almost too heavy to bear.
Actually many of the deserted old houses in the centre of Eski Halfeti are beautiful traditional architectures which, if properly rebuilt and maintained, can sure become another top tourist magnet, much like the way Mardin and Midyat have become popular due to their traditional architectures in the last few years. But it seems the inhabitants of Eski Halfeti are not even remotely interested in that - given the apparent lack of even basic accommodations for budget tourists in town - and so far no outside investors seem to care much about this place either. Which is really a pity, because this town, with the beautiful river valley, the deserted houses, the hidden paths that lead out of the village into the hills dense with undergrowth, has a very transquil sense of beauty which could not be found easily in Turkey anymore.
For historical fanatics likes me, it always stirs up an incredible mix of feelings, ranging from excitement, to bewilderment to nostalgia, whenever I stand on the east bank of the Euphrates and look over to the western side of the river. More than 2000 years ago, this river and this particular shore served as the border between the mighty Roman Empire and the equally mighty Persian Empire. And the river Euphrates both divides and connects the vast territorium of these two different spheres of power. Here on the east bank, where Eski Halfeti is situated, is where the rich and powerful Persian domain began, whereas just a few hundred meters across the river was the doorstep of the Roman civilizations. It is just so surreal to find yourself coming face to face with one of the most important natural borders and cultural crossroads in the history of human civilizations.
Copyrights@2011. All text and photos by YC Cheng. All Rights Reserved.
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