Birecik Dam

The Birecik Dam, one of the 21 dams of the Southeastern Anatolia Project of Turkey, is located on the Euphrates River 60 km downstream of Atatürk Dam and 8 km upstream of Birecik town 80 km west of Province of Şanlıurfa in the southeastern region of Turkey. It was purposed for irrigation and energy production. There is a run-of-the-river hydroelectric power plant, established in 2001, at the dam, with a power output of 672MW (six units at 112 MW each) can generate an average of 2.5 billion kWh per year. The Birecik dam is a structure consisting of a concrete gravity and clay core sandgravel fill with a height of 62.5 m from the foundation. It was designed by Coyne et Bellier. The total catchment area is 92700 ha. The Birecik project will be realized under the status of Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) model.

The dam was built on top of the ruins of the ancient city of Zeugma. According to Bogumil Terminski (2015), the construction of the dam resulted in resettlement of approximately 6,000 people.