Fatih Sik knows death is lurking beneath his feet since two huge holes opened up in his cornfield. But the farmer has learned to live with the fear, because leaving is not an option.
“When I’m on my tractor, I can’t help but think that (the ground) could collapse and I know that death will be waiting for me at the bottom,” the 45-year-old farmer told AFP in Karapinar, in the central province of Konya, Turkey’s breadbasket.
“But I have to keep working, otherwise my family will starve,” he resigns himself.
Sinkholes have existed in the region for centuries, but their number has increased in recent years due to drought and overexploitation of groundwater, experts say.
Invisible from afar, these cavities, which form where groundwater dissolves the bedrock, can be 50 meters deep.
“One of the major causes of sinkholes is climate change,” says Arif Delikan, a professor at Konya Technical University, who has counted 640 sinkholes in Konya province, including 600 in Karapinar district.
Together with the authorities, he identified 2,700 risk areas.
“About 20 holes have formed in one year in Karapinar,” adds the specialist, hammer in hand to probe the ground at the edge of a sinkhole.
– “Scary” –
Last year, Adem Ekmekci was in one of his fields when the earth nearly swallowed him up.
“My foot suddenly slipped. I looked at the ground and saw cracks,” said the 57-year-old farmer, whose 10 hectares of land have seen two sinkholes created in three years, each about 50 metres wide.
“When I came back, the ground had collapsed and several trees had been swept away. It was really scary.”
Another sinkhole formed 10 metres from his house in 2020. The ground “subsided 20 metres,” he said, adding that he was too scared to sleep at home that night.
But with nowhere to go, he too has learned to live with fear, which has taken hold of the region’s residents, although no one has yet been killed or injured.
– Illegal wells –
The fear is all the greater as rainfall was 40% below average this winter in the province of Konya, Turkey’s leading producer of wheat, corn and sugar beets.
“Difficult days lie ahead,” says Yigit Aksel, a farmer who knows that irrigation, which is so valuable for these water-hungry crops, is partly to blame for the problem.
Faced with a lack of rainfall, some farmers have drilled illegal wells, further weakening the bedrock.
According to Arif Delikan, the drought that has been increasing in the region for two decades has increased the pressure on groundwater.
“The water that was on the surface 30 years ago is now 40 metres underground,” he explains.
Within a decade, Lake Meke, a crater lake in Karapinar, dried up and became covered in salt.
– Tourism –
However, entrepreneurs are trying to transform this Swiss cheese-like soil into an opportunity.
In late June, one of them, Cem Kinay, opened a 13-room luxury hotel in an 800-year-old Seljuk caravanserai on the edge of Turkey’s oldest and most famous chasm.
Half-filled with water, the sinkhole looks like a lake. “This is the first time I’ve seen this, it’s impressive,” exclaims, fascinated, Seongmo Kim, a South Korean tourist.
But in this sinkhole too, water is becoming scarce.
The grandfather of Gumus Uzun, a villager, told her that sixty years ago the chasm was used to water sheep and wash clothes.
Back then, the water level was much higher, she said. “Now it’s going down.”
