Older Near Eastern roots indicate the shape of the northern Mesopotamian weather god Hadad, Babylonian Adad, who was depicted standing on a bull with a double ax and a lightning bolt.

The Atatürk dam (Turkish Atatürk Barajı) on the Euphrates is the first finished, most important and largest of the 22 dams of the Southeast Anatolia project GAP (Güneydogu Anadolu Projesi) in Turkey.

Nemrut Mountain, much better known as the Mountain of Nemrut, is in the province of Adiyaman to the west of the Euphrates valley in the south east of Turkey and is one of the most important tourist sites in the country.

Sanlıurfa as a city is mostly known by the Europeans with her antique name, Edessa. Sanlıurfa is the central part of a city in Turkey with a population of about 390.000 and is located in the hot climate zone in southeast Anatolia. In geographical terms, she is part of Northern Mesopotamia.

We had designated Göbekli Tepe as the most important destination and the highlight of our Şanlıurfa journey. We had as such communicated with an archaeologist, Mr. Klaus Schmidt for this purpose.

On our tour through the southeast we also reached Gaziantep, whose mosaics in the Zeugma Mosaic Museum are known far beyond the country's borders.

Like the years before the 14th of July, the day of “Appearance of the great Gods” will be celebrated at Mount Nemrud having some meetings and festivals.

Hakkari (Kurdish: Colemêrg) is one of Turkey's 81 provinces and borders Iran to the east and Iraq to the south. To the north is Van and to the west is Şırnak.

We have already reported several times about the relationship of the people in Anatolia to high mountains, whose imagination of nature resulted in mountains becoming something divine, inexplicably large and powerful.

Van, located on the south eastern shores of Lake Van, the largest lake in Turkey, was known as Tuşpa and was the capital city of the ancient Urartian State (1000 B.C.). Van

Mount Nemrut near Tatvan in the province of Bitlis is very often and easily confused with the mountain of the same name in the province of Adiyaman, which houses the famous lion horoscope and the statues of the gods erected by King Antiochus.

The city of Erzincan, which lies at an altitude of approx. 1200 m on the north bank of the Karasu River, is the junction of the main roads from Sivas to Erzurum and from Erzincan to Elazığ.

Like lot of other Turkish towns, Erzincan has a long history. Even though Hittite settlements have not been found to date, Erzincan is named as belonging to the Hittite Empire.

Malatya already existed in Hittite times with a former places name when it was called Melid (today Arslantepe). After the fall of the great empire, it was ruled by the descendants of Kuzi-Teššup of Karkemiš, a grandson of Šuppiluliuma II, the last ruler of the Hittite empire.

The Hittites had already settled in the region around Malatya and founded a settlement called Melid, which in Hittite means something like honey and was probably a synonym for the economic importance of the settlement.

If you only deal a little with the history of the city of Van, you will also find a very long history that can be traced back to around 5,000 BC. The first traces of human settlement can be found on the Tilkitepehügel (fox hill) in the vicinity of the town Van.

Bingöl is a Turkish province in eastern Anatolia. The provincial capital is called Bingöl too, the old name is Çabakçur.

Iğdır is a province in eastern Turkey, which borders on the one hand with Armenia and on the other hand with the Azerbaijani exclave Naxçıvan and Iran.

The region around Elazığ, like the surrounding districts of Bingöl, Tunceli, Malatya and in the South of Diyarbakır, has a long history, traces of settlement are around 5000 years old. (Image source Klaus-Peter Simon - own work CC BY-SA 3.0)

During the 10th century A.D. Kars was the capital of a kingdom ruled by the Bagratides, a people originally from Armenia. During the 11th century Kars was destroyed by the Seldjuks, during the 13th century by the Mongolians, and later was conquered and destroyed by Tamerlan.