DSİ

Racketeers are exploiting legal loopholes to grab lands on lakes and around dams that are drying due to drought and leasing them out for commercial agricultural activities, daily Milliyet has reported.

Those lands, which emerge when water levels in lakes or dams recede, are very fertile but they normally belong to the General Directorate of State Hydraulic Works (DSİ).

Lake Marmara in Turkey's western province of Manisa has almost dried up due to years of low rainfall and misusage of its water for agricultural purposes.

Created by the State Hydraulic Works (DSİ) for agricultural irrigation in 1945, the lake used to give an average of 150 million cubic meters of water per year to the Gediz Plain.