Alaköprü Dam

The Alaköprü Dam sits in Turkey's Mersin province, roughly 12 km north of Anamur, impounding the Anamur River. What makes the project remarkable is not the dam itself but its purpose: the resulting reservoir is designed to pump up to 75 million cubic metres of fresh water per year through a submarine pipeline stretching over 100 km across the Mediterranean to Northern Cyprus. It represents one of the eastern Mediterranean's most unusual infrastructure schemes, conceived to supply an island that lacks sufficient freshwater reserves of its own.