The Treasures Emerging From Turkey’s Dying Lakes

Mustafa Şahin used to spend much more of his time below water. As the founder of Turkey’s first underwater archaeology department, he practiced his work in the country’s lakes, diving deep to uncover important historical ruins. In 2014, he found the Basilica of Saint Neophytos—a contender for the home of the original Nicene Council—in Lake İznik, a discovery that Archaeology Magazine and The Archaeological Institute of America deemed one of the most important that year.

But Mustafa isn’t diving anymore. His work as head archaeologist of the basilica now keeps him out of the lake, because Saint Neophytos is no longer under İznik’s waters. It sits on dry ground.

Lake İznik is facing a crisis and it isn’t alone. Turkey is losing most of its lakes at an alarming rate: close to 75 percent are in the process of disappearing, many within the last decade. The trend is not unique to the country, according to the United Nations (UN)—which cites climate change and increased pollution around the globe as macro-causes—but Turkey is in particularly dire straits. Last year saw one of the most severe droughts in recent history, and 88 percent of the country faces desertification.

Yet as the drought has caused lakes and reservoirs to recede, a host of archaeological finds are emerging, from ancient docks and a small chapel in Sapanca Lake, near İstanbul, to Neolithic-era monoliths in the southeast near Adıyaman and Lake Van.

For archaeologists, the water emergency can be double-edged. “While it is upsetting because it negatively impacts agricultural activities, it is also pleasing because it presents new archaeological discoveries,” says Mehmet Alkan, the head of the Adıyaman Museum. “It reflects both happiness and sadness at the same time.”

Experts also face new challenges in conserving the sites. At Saint Neophytos, “instead of doing excavation under the water, we [started] doing excavation in the land,” says Şahin, who is also a professor at Uludağ University. “It was a very bad thing, because it's very difficult to excavate when it’s out of the water.” As archaeologist Gül Yurun Mavinil, who works in Çanakkale, notes, “the most significant problem is the abrupt change in microclimate. Stone and especially wooden structures, preserved for millennia in oxygen-isolated underwater environments, begin to deteriorate rapidly upon contact with air and sunlight. The transition from a highly humid environment to a dry one causes cracking and rot, while also leaving the sites unprotected and vulnerable to looting.”

Underwater archaeology as a field is not new to Turkey—it’s been an important part of the discipline here since at least the 1960s. Due to the area’s miles of coastline and constantly shifting ground, many of its relics have ended up below the waves. “The discipline was kind of developed here in Turkey, but of course, it was all focused on shipwrecks,” says Vasıf Şahoğlu, Professor of Archaeology at Ankara University, whose current project involves excavating Bronze Age finds in the Aegean Sea. What’s new is the rapidness with which sites are emerging from lakes, with many reappearing within the last decade.

In aerial images of the Basilica of Saint Neophytos from 2014, the ghostly outlines of the structure can be seen just below the water. According to Şahin, locals knew for years that there was something interesting down below; kids swimming in the lake could spot the ancient walls shimmering below the surface, but they didn’t suspect that it was a major ruin, he says.

When Şahin’s team first excavated the basilica, they planned to create an underwater museum that would allow visitors to view the structures beneath the lake. But as İznik began receding in 2020, it became apparent that such a museum would no longer be necessary. Now, parts of the lake that were formerly underwater sprout with clumps of grass; in some areas, the lake shore has shrunk inward by over a mile.

In ancient times, İznik was the above-water metropolis of Nicaea, a notable site for early Christianity. The basilica was located outside of the city walls; of the 14 church-like structures found in the area, it is thought to be the most likely site of the first and seventh meetings of the famous Council of Nicaea. “It's not the only ancient basilica that has been found in the area, but it's the only one with certain material dating to the fourth century, which makes it unique among the 14 because that puts us right near the time of the council,” says Sarah Porter, an Assistant Professor, Department of Religious Studies at Gonzaga University who specializes in early Christianity. Using historic texts, clues from paintings in the Vatican, and recovered items at the İznik site, Şahin and his team are confident that this was most likely where the councils—which established early Christian doctrine and included participants like Saint Nicholas—took place.

How the basilica ended up under the water in the first place speaks to the constant geophysical changes in this part of the world. “Turkey is a really geologically mercurial area, and stuff was changing really fast, even in antiquity,” says Porter. “For instance, if you've been to Ephesus, you know that the harbor moved out very quickly in antiquity. Given the seismic activity, not just in antiquity, but over the last 2,000 years—yeah, stuff moves.” Historical records show devastating earthquakes struck Nicaea throughout its history, with a magnitude 9 earthquake in 1065 AD demolishing the basilica for good.

As the basilica has reemerged, archaeologists are rushing to preserve it. Underwater, the ground around the ancient structure was soft and clay-like, making it easy to move aside and work around. But once the shoreline receded, the lake bed hardened into the consistency of concrete, making the excavation work more intensive. Though the scientists have been able to forgo their diving equipment, they must grapple with the elements above water now.

While the Basilica of Saint Neophytos has received the most international attention, it's far from the only place in Turkey where ancient history is rising out of the depths. Over the last few years in Adıyaman Province, in the southeast of Turkey, the receding waters of the Atatürk Reservoir have also revealed a wealth of archaeological finds—including some dating to the dawn of permanent settlements in the region.

Shrinking water levels near the dam in Belören Village, driven by drought in 2018, revealed petroglyph rock paintings from 10,000 BC, which were eventually submerged again when the water rose. In 2021, pottery dating back to the 2nd millennium BC was unearthed at the Gavur Tepesi Düz settlement when the reservoir receded. And in 2025, megaliths shaped like the letter ‘T’, along with two circular structures, were uncovered in Kızılöz Village in the Samsat District. The finds are very similar to stones recently uncovered at the Neolithic site Göbekli Tepe, an early ceremonial site in the Fertile Crescent dating back 12,000 years. Alkan, the head of the Adıyaman Museum, adds that experts have been searching for these types of structures “for years.”

Preservation at this particular site is complicated because the Atatürk Reservoir is not a natural waterway. It was created by the Atatürk Dam, which was commissioned in 1992, and fluctuations of the dam affect the depth of the water in the reservoir along with drought. Soon after their discovery, the T-shaped standing stones faced an immediate threat of being re-submerged due to the seasonal fluctuation of the water level. So the Adıyaman Museum took swift action to excavate, document, and study the structures before eventually relocating them to the site of the ancient city of Perre, where they will remain both protected and more accessible to a curious public.

Turkey’s most famous lake has also not escaped the effect of the drought. Deep in the southeast of the country, not far from the Iranian border, Lake Van is Turkey’s biggest lake and the world’s largest soda lake. As Van’s shoreline has retreated, archaeologists have uncovered an Iron-Age Urartian settlement dating to the 9th-7th centuries B.C., the Urartian-era Adilcevaz Castle, parts of Old Erciş Castle from around A.D. 1350-1460, and Ottoman-era wooden piers.

“The reappearance of immovable cultural heritage structures built along the shores of Lake Van during different historical periods, as the lake waters recede, is a great source of excitement for us,” says Prof. Dr. Rafet Çavuşoğlu, Faculty Member in the Department of Archaeology at Van Yüzüncü Yıl University. He adds: “These finds are not only archaeologically significant but also valuable from a paleoclimatological perspective.”

Indeed, the lake has shifted and changed throughout history, as the archaeological finds indicate. Historical sources back this up, with 17th-century writing by the Ottoman traveler Evliya Çelebi noting the changing level of the lake and the presence of submerged settlements. For Çavuşoğlu, “these remains revealed by the retreating lake waters are also important because they demonstrate that climate change is not solely a modern phenomenon and that similar environmental fluctuations occurred in past centuries.”

“However, this situation evokes mixed feelings,” he says. “On the one hand, the emergence of new archaeological data is scientifically exciting, on the other, the scale of long-term drought and contemporary climate change presents a worrying picture in terms of the preservation of cultural heritage.”

Lake Van’s current diminishment has been notably rapid and dramatic. And while the retreating water is revealing amazing ancient sites,it is also laying bare the detritus of years of pollution, malodorous mud, and the carcasses of starving birds who can’t access fish in the dwindling lake.

The drought that drains Turkey now is just the latest twist in a long history of climate, geology, and natural disasters shaping the land. Recent research has shown that Turkey’s ancient and powerful Hittite Empire suffered from punishing droughts that may have pushed it and other Bronze Age civilizations in the Mediterranean to collapse. Şahoğlu, the professor of archaeology at Ankara University, tries to take a broad view of the changes. “I see that this is coming, and no human power can stop it, because this didn't happen just once; it's like a cycle, it keeps happening, it's the nature of the universe. We cannot stop it,” he says. “This happened many times in the past drought periods.”

Meanwhile, the Basilica of Saint Neophytos gained the international spotlight in November 2025, when Pope Leo XIV visited the site on his Middle East tour, drawing attention to the formerly submerged structure. For Şahin, it was an amazing moment that highlighted all the complicated and complex work his team has been doing on the basilica for the last decade. “The Pope stood here, stood here with the Cardinals, and they prayed here together,” he says. “That's the peak of what an archeologist could experience.”

Whether or not the water of Lake İznik will ever return to its pre-2020 levels remains to be seen. Şahin is skeptical. But history is long and Turkey’s ground is always shifting—sometimes swallowing its past below the water, and sometimes revealing secrets anew from the depths.