Kızılırmak River

The 1355 km long Kizilirmak ( kɯzɯlɯɾmak, ancient Greek Ἅλυς Halys ) is the longest flowing exclusively through Turkey stream. The present name Kızılırmak means " Red River "; the color is caused by iron-bearing clay, which he carries with him.

River

The river rises in the eastern Anatolian highlands about 150 km west of the origin of the Euphrates. Its source is located about 120 kilometers east of Sivas on Kızıl and Kumanlı Dağ. First fluent in west and southwest direction, he turns in the central Anatolia after flowing through the Hirfanli Reservoir to the north or northeast, breaks through the Pontic Mountains, where it flows through the Altınkaya reservoir. Then the Kızılırmak opens slightly north-west of Samsun and just north of Bafra in a broad delta in the Black Sea.

The delta of the river within the terms of the Ramsar Convention as a wetland area particularly worthy of protection.

The Kızılırmak is not navigable due to its very different seasonal water flow and its rapids.

History

The Hittites called the Kızılırmak Maras Santa. In antiquity, the river Halys, which comes from the Greek word for salt and thus " salty river " meant said. He made an important and often embattled border between different kingdoms. The Halys formed the western boundary of the empire of the Medes at the time of its greatest expansion in the 6th century BC. The ambiguous verdict of the oracle of Delphi against the Lydian king Croesus, he would at the Halys exceeded " destroy a great kingdom ," refers to the function of the river as a border between the Lydians and the Persians, which followed the Medes: Croesus eventually destroyed his own kingdom, as he took the field against Cyrus II.