Burdur

Burdur exists because tectonic forces created basins that filled with water. The graben valleys of Turkey's Lakes Region trapped rainfall into closed systems with no outlet to the sea—each lake an evolutionary island where endemic species diverged for millennia. Lake Burdur once covered 211 square kilometers; by 2021, it had shrunk to 122. The Burdur toothcarp, found nowhere else on Earth, watches its world evaporate.

The closed-basin hydrology that created endemic species also created Sagalassos. At 1,500 meters elevation in the Taurus foothills, this Pisidian city became "first city of Pisidia, friend and ally of the Romans" under Hadrian. Altitude preserved what lowland cities lost: when the seventh-century earthquakes and plague depopulated most of Anatolia, Sagalassos's remoteness meant no one came to recycle its marble columns. Belgian archaeologists since 1990 have recovered 90% of original building elements—statues at colossal scale lying where they fell. The same isolation that killed the city preserved it.

Modern Burdur extracts rather than preserves. The marble industry—70 quarries and 100 processing facilities producing "Burdur Beige" for 27 countries—grows 25% annually. Dairy farming accounts for 85% of farm income. Both require water the shrinking lake cannot spare. Salinity has increased 40% since 1980; another 30% is projected within a decade, pushing past seawater concentrations.

Lake Salda offers an alternative model. Its hydromagnesite shores—the only place on Earth with minerals matching Mars's Jezero Crater—earned UN Top 100 Geological Heritage Site status in 2024 and NASA's attention for Mars analogue research. By 2026, Burdur must choose which lake defines its future: the dying Ramsar site losing its endemic species, or the "Turkish Maldives" whose preservation could anchor scientific tourism. The choice will determine whether extraction or ecology wins.