Tek Tek Dağları was declared a national park on 21 June 2007, and it is managed by the General Directorate of Nature Conservation and National Parks under the national parks law.
The capacity recorded is 165 visitors, 20 vehicles and 50 tents, so camping is provided for. Administrative responsibility for the park passed between ministries over the years, ending with the present directorate.
The park covers 19,335 hectares of the Tek Tek mountains, and it holds a striking cluster of first-degree archaeological sites: Büyük Senemmağara, Keçili Tepe and Karahantepe, Soğmatar (Yağmurlu) and Şuayipşehri. Those sites come under the Ministry of Culture and Tourism rather than the park administration. The way in is from the Şanlıurfa–Mardin highway: about 12 kilometres beyond Çamlıdere turn south and pass through the village of Tepedibi. By the main road the park is some 42 kilometres from Şanlıurfa, and about 77 from the GAP airport.
Its flora is modest in number — 254 taxa, six of them endemic — but important in kind. The park holds wild relatives of crops grown today: one of barley and four of wheat, among them wild emmer, and wild forms counted as the forebears of lentil, chickpea and pea, which survive on stony slopes and, in the pea's case, in the bed of the Rüstem valley. Wild pistachio, the menengiç, is singled out as a plant of real economic value. The Rüstem valley in the north is the richest part of the park for insects and birds as well; 85 bird species have been recorded across the park. In the Rüstem valley the inventory team also photographed the African migrant butterfly, Catopsilia florella, earlier reported from Bitlis but never photographed, and added it to Türkiye's fauna.
- Designated
- 29.05.2007
Visiting hours
- Visiting hours
- 09:00 - 17:00
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).
