Turkey's growing sinkhole problem

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1:00I'm in Koya in Central Turkey. It's the agricultural heartland of the country and its farms contribute more to the national economy than any other provinces. Fields here stretch out for miles, going wheat and barley, but most of all sugar beet, seven million tonnes a year. These are loaded into trucks on an industrial scale heading to factories where they are processed, boiled and refined into sugar crystals. Farming has fueled Koya for millennia, but now it's under threat from sinkholes as fields literally collapse. I'm Zainette Begansoy and this is the documentary from the BBC World Service. Koya is more than one big field. It's famous as the resting place of the mystic Sufi poet Rumi and home to the whirling dervishes who follow his teachings. It's an ancient province that was a key stop on the Silk Road. About two dozen tourists are gathered that are renovated in from

2:03the 13th century that once served Silk Road travelers. They are here to see the Kuzoran sinkhole. It's almost 300 meters in diameter and 145 meters deep. This is the largest sinkhole in Turkey. Where are you coming from? Hong Kong. Did you see the sinkhole? It's close. What do you think about it? It's so beautiful, beautiful. It's good. Everything is good. From where I am, you can see layers and layers of exposed rock. It's like a CT scan of the land's geology. I've seen photos of it from the 1980s which show that this sinkhole was once filled with water to the top, but now the water levels have declined significantly. The remaining water changes color from green to blue depending on the day. There's something mesmerizing about this sinkhole. And while this sinkhole is thousands of years old, stable, and even a budding tourist destination, this region has seen hundreds of dangerous new sinkholes emerging recent years.

3:08I'm watching a clip on social media dated January 3rd, 2025. It's a sinkhole that formed in someone's field in Konya. First you see and hear the initial fall of the rocks and then suddenly it all collapses with a loud roar and a cloud of dust and there are people screaming. Someone screams, Allah or God. And in an interview afterwards the farmer says he was just checking on his irrigation and then suddenly there's a sinkhole. I've seen many videos of sinkholes, but this is the first one I'm seeing that actually shows the moment of collapse and it's very dramatic. According to the Turkish government's disaster and emergency management authority, there are 739 sinkholes in the area known as the Konya closed basin, which includes Konya itself. Experts at Konya Technical University's sinkhole research centers say their numbers have rapidly increased in the past 20 years,

4:13with 40 new sinkholes in 2025 alone. And the people who are being most impacted are the region's farmers. I'm now on my way to a district of Konya that's experienced the most amount of sinkholes. It's called Kura Pinar, which means dark creek and I'm going to meet farmers there. It's early morning and I'm seeing tractors traveling through the flat plains where animals, graze and green fields are dotted with thousands of water sprinklers. I've also seen signs on city highways that talk about the water crisis that Turkey faces. One sign said, hear the screams of the dry earth, let's protect our water. I think I'm going to keep hearing about water while I'm here. I asked for directions to find sinkholes and one man told me they're everywhere. A little bit later I asked someone else. He told me not to fall into the sinkhole with the car. That was great. I'm walking through farmland. I smell fresh manure. A dog is following me.

5:23There is wheat on the left side. It's still green. There is a water sprinkler system and a field that's ready to be planted. I hear there's a sinkhole quite nearby, so I'm trying to go and see it. That's a sinkhole. There's a sinkhole in the middle of the wheat field. It's quite a magnificent thing to witness. The sinkhole was part of the field once and now there's a gaping hole in the middle of the field. Is that another sinkhole? Right next to the sinkhole that I'm looking at is another sinkhole. There's barbed wire surrounding the sinkhole and the sign that says dangerous zone do not enter. I wonder how the farmers who work here who live here feel they

6:26are surrounded by this threat every day. Fati Shuk is a 48 year old farmer and has worked on this land for decades. Growing wheat, barley, sugar beet and corn. He has cows that he dots on and half a dozen dogs. His face is turned and has the deep lines of a man who spends long hours working in the sun. I asked him to take me back to the day when the most recent sinkhole formed. Words are not enough to describe that moment. We were eating with friends over there and they say, Fati, there's a sound. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, sounds and I remember that water had become cloudy. I thought something might happen but I didn't know where. The evening prayer ended and it started. Suddenly boom an explosion of soil and mud. 10 or 15 meters high. It was dusk and the sky

7:30was getting darker. That night it was boom, boom, boom, boom, until the morning. We couldn't sleep that night and we couldn't sleep for 20 days. Shuk has three sinkholes in his fields that collapse in August 2022, August 2023 and August 2024. Now he's anxious every summer. Geologists say sinkholes take a long time to form and they can't predict the moment of collapse but there are a few early warning signs. Water accumulating in new spots, cracking cement, diagonal or stair-shaped cracks in buildings and doors and windows that do not close. Then when collapse is imminent, just like Shuk noticed, well water that turns cloudy and muddy. Shuk's experience is far from isolated. My name is Mohamed Gülbahar. I live in Konya Karapunar. I am married and have five children.

8:32I work in agriculture and livestock. I am 43 years old. There are three sinkholes in your fields. Do they make you anxious? Of course it makes us anxious. There is a sinkhole 500 meters away. There is another one a kilometer away. There is one there and there is another one across it and there is one by the road. I ask the farmer what it's like to work near them. We use to them. We drive along the age and keep going. You drive a tractor next to a 10 meter deep hole. My wife is a little anxious because of the children. When they are in the field she keeps saying, don't go there watch out. It's hard to understand the scale of the sinkhole issue from the ground. I can't see how many there are. I can't see how deep they are. I can't see how big they are because they're quite dangerous to get near. I thought of a solution and of course it's a drone. Take off.

9:35I see all shades of green on the fields. This is the height of spring after a rainy season and that's a sinkhole. Another one I count one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen fourteen fifteen sixteen seventeen eighteen nineteen twenty one there at least twenty one sinkholes in this one area. This is the documentary from the BBC World Service. This is Matt Rogers from Los Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang. This is Bowen Yang from Los Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang. You know when people try a new food and suddenly it's like wait that's the reaction a lot of people are having when they first try cutie mayo. It's the one with the red cap and the little baby on the bottle. You've probably seen it in the grocery store before and if you've ever just walked past it some people

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13:01It's special for me and that's why I call you here and it's one of the biggest sinkholes in the area. It is in an agricultural field and right next to where people live. This is a seriously worrying situation. It's perhaps the biggest one formed during this new period when sinkholes collapse because of the depletion of groundwater and the increase of agricultural irrigation. Sinkholes are one type of carstic landforms. Carstic landforms are unique landscapes formed when soluble rocks dissolve, leaving cavities behind and making the landscape more fragile and unstable. These landforms occur as a result of the interaction between groundwater and the rock. This causes the cavities formed underground to gradually expand and eventually suddenly collapse because it can no longer support the weight of the material on top. The Yeremolo sinkhole is a cover-collapse sinkhole. In other words, it is not a sinkhole formed in the bedrock

14:04itself. The recent sinkholes in the region are almost all cover-collapsed sinkholes. This sinkhole then is young in terms of geological age. Very different to the ancient sinkhole in the bedrock where I first met the tourists, but typical of the ones collapsing now. So these recent sinkholes, why are they happening? Rainfall is low and the climate continues to become more arid, but the biggest factor that triggers this is the human factor. There is excessive groundwater use here. Growing crops, especially sugar beet and corn, requires a lot of water. For agricultural irrigation, rivers have been dammed, lakes tap to the point of drying up and wells have been drilled deeper and deeper into the landscape. Water in this region is becoming more scarce. I spoke to Eran Atak, a water expert who works as a nature conservation manager at the World Wide Fund for Nature or WWF in Turkey. When there's a sinkhole, it's a symptom telling us that we are using more water than nature can

15:10sustainably provide us. So sinkholes tell us that there's something going on underground, and it means that there's not much water anymore there, so the soil is collapsing down. So it tells us you need to research why there's not enough water down there, and how are you going to act against that? The Foundation published a report in 2014 about water in Konya, and had already warned that unsustainable agricultural practices would have severe consequences, including sinkholes. At the time, there were already clear signs that water use in the Konya closed basin was becoming unsustainable. Wetlands were shrinking, groundwater levels were declining, and water demand had exceeded the basin's renewable supply. Our research showed that the basin was using around 6.5 billion cubic meters of water annually, while only 4.4 billion cubic meters were sustainably available. So the report concluded that the problem was not simply dropped,

16:16but long-term imbalance between water availability and water demand. Farmers could not always rely on water provided by the state from dams and lakes. They could apply for licenses to dig their own wells, but as demand rose and supplies of water fell, these licenses became impossible to obtain. Many farmers in Konya resorted to digging wells illegally in their fields to extract groundwater for free. We estimated that there were around 130,000 groundwater wells in the basin based on the government agencies, data, but only about 27,000 were licensed. Farmers rely on these wells because they need reliable water to maintain production, especially where surface water is limited. But why do farmers need more water now than they used to? Geologists Fetullah Arak. Well, whether there is a need is debatable because need arises from necessity. There might also be

17:20a desire for greater profits in the region, especially after the 2000s, groundwater use increased significantly. The reason is this, corn, which wasn't previously part of the product portfolio, has become a significant crop and is now one of the most widely produced. Sugar beet has been around for years, but it has spread throughout the basin. If you can't get more profits, why wouldn't you choose that? Your resource is water and that is underground. You keep going by digging more wells. I should note that the topic of wells is very sensitive and not one farmers are willing to discuss. So it's hard to get a sense from the ground of which farms do and don't have licensed wells. But many are happy to talk about their work, like Ma'am at Gynbahar. We plant barley with alfalfa, sugar beet and sunflower. We plant sunflower and sugar beet

18:22as spring crops and alfalfa year round. To plant in autumn, we prefer barley and wheat. Farmers did not choose to move to these water thirsty crops out of greed or in a vacuum. Sugar beet in particular is simply where the demand is. The Turkish government passed the sugar law in 2001 to ensure domestic self-sufficiency for sugar. This law says quotas for beet production and guarantees a stable market for the production of enough beet to produce enough sugar for the entire country, 86 million people. Last year, that meant producing over 20 million tons of beet. Despite all the water the crop needs, the farmers feel that they are being unfairly blamed. If this farmer doesn't produce, everyone is hungry. They tell me that it's about the misuse of water. I don't consume water like that. I'm consuming for my country. I'm contributing to Turkey's economy. I don't eat it myself. I planted that sugar beet. Tomorrow, I will sell it

19:30to the state. You will also eat the sugar from it. And I'm not talking from the WWF. It is not fair to blame the farmers for sinkholes. They are varied and I understand this worry. The basin is their home, actually. Then you are blamed that the sinkholes are the consequences of your actions. However, I think that there are the victims of the whole situation. I mean, poorly managed water resources, wrong crop patterns and everything. So farmers are also following the policies, farming policies, farmers choose crops that are subsidized by the government agencies. Professor Errik told me that in Konya, the saying goes, we tend to sheep the rest this play. It's hard to explain, but this is really fun to say in Turkey. Budayvekoyum, Gyrisoyum, it means that those are the original products of the region. The ones the land is built to sustain easily without intense work or extra resources. He argues that if farmers planted the crops

20:34that historically grew here, the groundwater reserves would have stayed stable. But farmers say they can't survive like that in the modern economy. The Turkish government sets its purchasing price of wheat and barley each year. The price increase this year for wheat is 22% and for barley 16%. But inflation on farm costs like fertilizers much higher at 32% annually. For these crops, income is not keeping up with costs. We plant barley and wheat. The year is 12 months. We harvest wheat once a year and then the barley. We eat for two months. What are we going to eat for 10 months? Should we go hungry, children, cost, electricity, our money worth nothing? I have to plant wheat and I have to plant corn, potatoes and clover. I have to plant something for each season. Otherwise, I am hungry. No one will give me any bread. Water thirsty crops like beaten corn are much more profitable.

21:40But it's not just farmers' consumption of groundwater that's a factor in the depleting reserves. Climate change also plays a part as rainfall declines and farmers are understandably keen to point at this aspect of the story. The rains from my childhood are gone. The old winter's are gone. I can say that our consumption of groundwater has no effect. I cannot say that. But the biggest factor in this is the lack of the blessing of rain. Time is running out for farmers. A recent United Nations report says that by 2030 Turkey will count as being officially water poor due to drought, population growth and industrialization. If the country does become water poor, Turkey's agriculture and forestry ministry has said that half of the population and 80% of the country's irrigated agriculture could face water shortages. To change farmers' behavior requires at least 10 years, but we need mechanisms to incentivize it and to speed it up.

22:45Some things are changing for the better. Agriculture planning is adapting to climate change and drought. The government has been updating how it brings water to fields with modern irrigation systems and an attack from WWF. We also see that the government is investing in changing the open channel system for irrigation to closed irrigation system. This is a crucial step because we have been losing water by evaporation and leakages in the open channels. These are good necessary measures. Once the water reaches the farm, modern technology means you can also use it more efficiently, using sprinklers instead of simply flooding the fields. But this is more complicated to achieve. Modern irrigation compared to flood irrigation is saving around 50% of water, but at farm level, we need farmers' investments also in modern irrigation systems. And here we cannot put the burden

23:46only on farmers' shoulders. I saw these modern systems that work in Konya. Government grants and incentives are broadening their adoption. But borrowing money to invest at the moment in Turkey is more or less impossible. The Turkish Central Bank's interest rate is 37%, necessitated by rampant inflation. So experts told me, farmers need more support from the government so they can invest in new irrigation methods. We reached out to Turkey's Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, but they don't reply. More efficient irrigation alone will not come close to solving the water crisis. Other new government efforts include new incentives to encourage the growth of more sustainable crops. The sugar law was updated this year. Beat fields will be monitored and require approval, and penalties for non-compliance will take effect in 2027. And the penalties for illegal wells are now steeper, including fines and even prison sentences. But experts say more enforcement is needed. Fetullah Utuk again. We say we are expecting climate change and drought, but it's already

24:52happening. We are in it. That means we don't have time. The time to take precautions for preparedness has passed. We must take action immediately. If the water shortages and droughts continue as projected, it will mean more and more sinkholes. And the question of how to prevent them will be replaced by the question of how to adapt to them. Sincoles can threaten property and infrastructure, and are potentially deadly to people and livestock standing in the wrong place at the wrong time. I wanted to know how Turkey's emergency management agency, Afad, thinks about sinkholes and how they work to mitigate their risks. Ali Sankörpeş, Konya Idapetajudurum. Ali Sankörpeş, Konya director of disaster and emergency management presidency. The subject of disaster and disaster management starts with risk management. On sinkholes, we are focused on risk management. We strive to minimize loss of life and property with precautions.

25:52If you know the danger and minimize risks, then you minimize vulnerability. That's our goal. We are working to determine areas that are susceptible to sinkholes. What does that give us? Let's say someone wants to build in an area sensitive to sinkholes. We do preliminary work for that. Normally, soil service for building feasibility requires drilling 15 meters deep, but here we require much deeper drilling to determine risk. We have 10 different scales, from low to very high sensitivity. The agency's sinkhole susceptibility map identified 739 sinkholes in this region, and keeps track of them with drones and infield measurements. The aim is to understand the changes and evaluate danger. The recently collapsed sinkholes so far have not killed anyone, and they have been on farmland, not in residential areas where people would be killed in large numbers. At the moment, a flood does not categorize sinkholes as a disaster.

26:59We can call to natural events in the disaster category. However, since we haven't experienced its catastrophic nature so far, we cannot definitively categorize it as a disaster. Is there risk right now? I can say that because we have taken all necessary precautions, we have minimized all the foreseeable risks. They aren't happening far away from us. They're happening right next to us. There could be a sinkhole under our house one day. I'm not saying this to make people panic, it's a possibility. So it's just pure luck that there hasn't been a serious accident or that from sinkholes. Farmer Fatihsuk lives and works on this land. Given that the sinkholes could spread further, I asked them if he ever thought about leaving. I said, they said, leave and be done with it.

28:00I was scared of the sinkholes, but I will be honest, I am more scared of leaving my home. I cannot think about abandoning this place where I was born and grew up. Because I earn my bread here, I have two daughters and I paid for their university tuition and their expenses with what I earned from these fields, from these animals. I cannot bring myself to leave my livelihood behind. This summer three sinkholes formed in a dried-up dam bed, only 50 kilometers away from the center of Konya City, where one and a half million people live. The threat to farmers like Fatihsuk are food security and potentially our cities is real. There's something fascinating and eerie about the sinkholes. Their strangeness draws you in. In person, it feels like standing on a precipice and looking inside the earth. What are these sinkholes trying to tell us?

29:03Sinkholes are dramatic because people can see them, but for me, the real story is much bigger. Wetlands are drying up, waterfalls are losing their breeding habitats, farmers are struggling to find water. I think these are all different symptoms of the same challenge. We are using more water than nature can sustainably provide. You've been listening to the documentary with me, Zaneb Beginsoy. It was produced by S.I. Alchemyp and me. It was a whistle-down production for the BBC World Service. It's fall in Jeep Country, and during the drive-in-to-fall sales event, get a great deal on four-by-fours that refuse to be contained, like Jeep Wrangler, confidence built into every drive with the most awarded SUV ever, Jeep Grand Cherokee, and freedom that can't be denied, with the open-air freedom in Jeep Gladiator. After 85 years, it's no surprise that Jeep became America's SUV brand. Get a great deal during the Jeep Drive-In-To-Fall sales event. Jeep is one more awards over its lifetime than any other SUV brand,

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