Guide
Halfeti is a small town on the bank of the Fırat (Euphrates) in Şanlıurfa province, three-fifths of which went under water when the Birecik dam was built in 2000; new neighbourhoods were laid out on the part that remained. It belongs to Turkey's Cittaslow network of slow towns. The stone houses, caves, churches and lanes of the area called old Halfeti are what most visitors come to see, along with the 19th-century Merkez Cami, the suspension bridge known as the Halfeti necklace, and streets lined with old houses and mansions. The minaret of the mosque of Savaşan village, a village lost under the reservoir, has become the symbol of the area.
Halfeti appears in Urartu texts as Halpa and was one of the important towns of the Kommagene kingdom. Hurri-Mitanni, Arami, Akamenid and Seleukos rulers followed one another here before it was attached to a province of the Roman empire in 74 BC. In the 16th century it passed to the Ottomans and was long known by the name of Rumkale, a district of Urfa; Halfeti became a district in its own right in 1954. Rumkale itself, which belongs to Gaziantep, and the villages around Halfeti hold many historic remains.
On the river, boat trips take about an hour along the route past Çekem and Savaşan villages and Rumkale, passing submerged houses, trees and mosques, floating restaurants, the suspension bridge and caves cut into the rock. The water is used for water-skiing, jet-skiing, diving, rowing and canoeing, and races are sometimes held. On land there are day walks of varying difficulty. Halfeti is also known for its cooking and its endemic plants and animals, above all the black rose, the Kara Gül, which grew in the gardens of the old houses before the dam and is found nowhere else in the world; the farm where it is grown can be visited.
When to go
- Climate
- Across Şanlıurfa as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from 5.7 °C in January to 32.1 °C in July; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in April, May and October; rainfall is heaviest in January (85 mm) and lightest in July (2 mm). Long-term means for 1929-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
