The Yeşilırmak, which flows through Amasya, gathers a series of streams into its bed before it reaches the Black Sea, and it owes much of its discharge to these tributaries. Two of the streams that join the main river within the provincial borders of Amasya, the Çekerek River and the Tersakan Stream, shape the farming of the area to the south and to the north of the city. One comes from the interior of Central Anatolia after a long journey; the other is fed by the lake and springs around Ladik and reaches the river by way of the Suluova plain. The irrigation of the Geldingen Plain, and the opening to agriculture of the Suluova Plain, once marshland, are both bound up with the fate of these two watercourses. The names of both can be followed through a chain of documents that runs from Hittite tablets to Strabo, and from the Arab geographers to Ottoman endowment records. Since the general description of the Yeşilırmak valley is given in a separate article, what follows looks only at the sources, the beds, the names, the effects on the region and the structures built on these two tributaries.

Two Tributaries in the Yeşilırmak Basin

The Yeşilırmak rises in the Köse Mountains southwest of Suşehri in Sivas and is 519 kilometres long, of which 129 kilometres lie within the borders of Amasya Province. The basin formed by the river and its main tributaries, the Çekerek, the Tersakan and the Kelkit, covers a very large area of 36,144 square kilometres. The measured mean discharge of the Yeşilırmak is 121 cubic metres per second, and its total annual flow is 5,707 million cubic metres. In the same measurements the annual flow of the Çekerek is given as 842 million and that of the Tersakan as 125 million cubic metres; in other words, the Çekerek carries roughly a seventh of this great volume and the Tersakan only a small part of it. The difference is a good starting point for understanding the role of the two streams in the region: the Çekerek is a sizeable river that gathers the water of a large inland basin, while the Tersakan is a stream fed by springs and rain, weak in summer, yet the one that waters the plains.

The third major tributary, the Kelkit, rises in mountains 2,600 metres high northwest of Erzincan, is about 400 kilometres long and joins the Yeşilırmak on the border between Amasya and Tokat; its mean discharge has been measured at 70.5 cubic metres per second and its annual flow at 2,526 million cubic metres. Set side by side, the figures show that the Çekerek and the Tersakan are smaller than the Kelkit but lie much closer to the plains of Amasya and are used far more directly. The Yeşilırmak also carries the Almus, Ataköy, Hasan Uğurlu and Suat Uğurlu dams, so that the river and its tributaries together form a fully regulated water system.

The two tributaries affect the course of the river within Amasya at different points. The Çekerek joins the Yeşilırmak south of the city, at the place called Kayabaşı, and from there one enters Amasya along the combined waters of the two streams. The Tersakan meets the river north of the city, after which the Yeşilırmak continues on towards the valley where the Amasya apple is grown. Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn's Amasya Tarihi, written early in the twentieth century, gives these two points in the place names of its own day: the Çekerek skirts the western side of Kayabaşı and joins the main river below Serçoban Hill, while the Tersakan enters the northern gorge of the city and flows into the Yeşilırmak above the vineyard quarter known as Bahçeler İçi. When he describes the city's vineyards and fruit, Hüsâmeddîn speaks of the vineyards on both banks of these three rivers together, and sees the vineyard economy of Amasya as the product of this network of water.

The Çekerek River

Source and Course

The sources do not agree on where the Çekerek rises. The section on landforms in the provincial records states that the river springs from the Yıldız Mountains, 2,500 metres high, about fifty kilometres northwest of Sivas; in the section of the same text describing the Yeşilırmak, however, the Çekerek is mentioned as a stream rising in the lands of Yozgat. An encyclopaedia entry in a foreign language places the source near Tokat. The contradiction has not been settled. What can be said with confidence is that the river sets out from the region of Sivas and Yozgat, passes the district of Çekerek in Yozgat and the area of Zile, and then enters Amasya from the south. Hüsâmeddîn, too, introduces the river simply as a stream "coming from the direction of Zile".

The length varies in the same way. The provincial records give it in one place as 200 and in another as 256 kilometres; some foreign sources say about 270 kilometres. The stretch within the borders of Amasya Province is 45 kilometres. Along its way it receives the Çorum Stream coming from the west, and the Efennik Stream is another of its important tributaries. The Çekerek joins the Yeşilırmak about fifteen kilometres south of Amasya, near Kayabaşı. The Ferhatarası Valley, some ten kilometres long and running from Kayabaşı to the Hacılar Meydanı in Amasya, is the stretch the river follows after the two streams have met and before it reaches the city.

Its Names: Zuliya, Skylax, Askilakis

The oldest name of the Çekerek may go back to the Hittite age. The tablets found at Maşat Höyük, on the banks of the river near Zile, in excavations led by Tahsin Özgüç between 1973 and 1977, brought to light new place names around this settlement, which bore the name Tapigga in the Hittite period. The Hittitologist Sedat Alp, in a study published in 1977, connected the mountain of Šakaddunuwa, named in a letter from the site, with the river Zuliya mentioned in another group of Hittite texts. Those texts tell of a battle fought by a Hittite prince named Tudhaliya against the Kaska: the Kaska seize the bridge over the river Zuliya and destroy it, the waters of the river are high, the goddess Ishtar of the city of Šamuḫa takes the prince by his belt and lifts him out of the water, and holds a shield over him against those attacking with bow, arrow and stone; the prince then drives across to the far bank in his chariot. Some scholars had proposed identifying the Zuliya with the Yeşilırmak itself or with the Delicesu in the Kızılırmak basin. Alp, bearing in mind that Mount Šakaddunuwa cannot have been far from Maşat Höyük, argues that the Zuliya must be the ancient Skylax, that is, the Çekerek, and suggests that the names Skylax and Çekerek may preserve forms of Zuliya altered over thousands of years. The identification is a proposal; like many place names in Hittite geography, it cannot be regarded as settled.

In Greek and Roman sources the river is called the Skylax. The geographer Strabo of Amaseia, describing the course of the Yeşilırmak (the ancient Iris), writes that after Gazioura the river turns east again, takes in the Skylax and other streams, flows past the very walls of his native Amaseia, and after joining the Lykos in Phanaroia reaches the plain of Themiskyra and the Black Sea. In Strabo's description the Skylax is one of the tributaries that join the river before it reaches Amaseia; the Lykos is the present-day Kelkit, which meets the Yeşilırmak below Amasya. The Hittite correspondence recovered at Maşat Höyük, on the banks of the Çekerek, is military in character. Sources reporting the excavation results record that the settlement was inhabited at least between 1420 and 1340 BC. Zela, the centre of the district Strabo calls Zelitis, is identified with present-day Zile.

Hüsâmeddîn records the ancient name of the river in the form "Askilakis", a reading of Skylax with a vowel added at the front. According to him, European travellers studying the river misheard the name Çekerek and wrote it down as "Çöterlik". Considering that the river sometimes flows lightly and sometimes dries up altogether, Hüsâmeddîn suggests that the name Askilakis may be a corruption of a Turkish word, "Sengilik". This explanation reflects the etymological approach of the author's own time and is not supported by present knowledge; the name he records does, however, correspond to Skylax.

Discharge and Floods

The regime of the Çekerek reflects the climate of the inland region that feeds it. Its highest measured discharge is 362 cubic metres per second and its lowest only 0.09 cubic metres; the mean is around twenty cubic metres per second. Floods occur in March, April and May, when melting snow and spring rain come together. The great gap between the two extremes shows that the river grows very weak in summer, while in spring it poses a serious flood threat to Amasya. Since the need for irrigation is greatest in the summer months, the season when water is plentiful does not coincide with the season when it is needed. The provincial records state plainly that the Geldingen Plain suffers from an irrigation problem caused by the sharp fall of water in summer and the pollution of the irrigation sources.

Hüsâmeddîn's observation of a century ago is strikingly close to this picture, though his judgement is more hopeful. For him the Çekerek is a river "as small as a stream" that swells in spring and sometimes stops altogether; "when it flows its benefit is great, and when it floods it does no harm." The documents of the following period do not bear out this last verdict. A master's thesis examining the floods that struck Amasya between 1930 and 1960 through archival documents and the national press shows that, along with the Yeşilırmak, the Tersakan, Çekerek, Deliçay and Kelkit streams at times burst their banks and even caused destruction at the same moment. In those years, at the beginning of almost every spring, water swollen by melting snow and rain turned the city and its surroundings into a lake; houses collapsed, gardens and fields became swamps, malaria spread on land left under water for long periods, the railway station was flooded and the Samsun-Amasya-Sivas railway line was cut.

The Geldingen Plain

The most visible work of the Çekerek in Amasya is the Geldingen Plain, south of the central district, which marks the beginning of the Yeşilırmak valley. The records state that this plain was formed by the erosion of the Çekerek, Çorum and Efennik streams. Covering about 48,400 hectares, or 8.8 per cent of the province's area, it is the most important plain in the province. Its altitude is around 450 metres, and it is the driest area within the provincial borders, with annual rainfall of between 400 and 500 millimetres; the climate is continental. This scant rainfall makes the plain's productivity largely dependent on river water. The Gökhöyük Agricultural Enterprise was also established on this plain.

The name of the plain also carries an old story of settlement. Hüsâmeddîn traces the name of the former district of Geldiklan, which covered the west of Amasya and had Ortaköy as its centre, to Baygeldi, one of the beys of the Afshar tribe, who settled here early in the Danishmendid period, around 490 of the Hijra (1097): the place was first called "Baygeldi Alan", shortened to "Geldi Alan", and then corrupted into "Geldiklan". The author also traces village names in the district such as Afşar, Doğan, Alikadı, Yağmur, Karlı and Akçakoyunlu to the leaders of clans that broke away from the Afshar and Bayındır tribes. That today's name Geldingen continues this Geldiklan may be supposed from the similarity of the names and the fact that they point to the same landscape; this, however, is an inference, and no document showing the passage from one name to the other has been found.

The Süreyyabey Dam

The largest intervention on the Çekerek is the Süreyyabey Dam, built within the district of Çekerek in Yozgat. Also known as the Çekerek Dam, it is a rock-fill dam built between 1996 and 2004; it is 103 metres high, with an embankment volume of 7.5 million cubic metres. The reservoir holds 1,310 cubic hectometres of water and covers 41.34 square kilometres. The dam serves energy production, irrigation and flood control; its installed capacity is 14 megawatts and its annual output about 51 gigawatt-hours. Its irrigation area is given as 66,165 hectares. Because the account in the provincial records was written while the dam was under construction, it expresses as an expectation that on completion Amasya would be protected from floods and that the irrigation problem of the Geldingen Plain would be largely solved.

How the dam's irrigation water would be shared was long a matter of dispute. In an agency report published in 2015, a member of parliament for Tokat claimed that construction had begun in 1998 (other sources give 1996 as the starting date) and said that the dam had the capacity to irrigate a total of 653,230 decares in Amasya, Tokat, Yozgat and Çorum, but that at the time only Amasya benefited from it. In the same report, officials of the State Hydraulic Works stated that the tender for the project to carry water to the farmland of Zile had been held and that construction of the canal would begin in 2016. The report suggests that the irrigation system bringing Çekerek water to the Geldingen Plain was set up before those of the other plains the river crosses. Another agency report, published in the spring of 2026, relates that the reservoir, which had fallen to 20.6 per cent full the previous year because of drought, rose to 42.7 per cent after a wet winter, that fish died in the reservoir during the drought years, and that fish are farmed in cages on the lake.

The Tersakan Stream

Source and Lake Ladik

The Tersakan is a stream of about a hundred kilometres that flows out of Lake Ladik; its length is given as 91.4 kilometres and its catchment as 2,684 square kilometres. The provincial records state that the stream rises at 1,925 metres on the slopes of Akdağ, receives the overflow of Lake Ladik, passes through the district of Havza and joins the Yeşilırmak within the borders of Amasya. The district records, on the other hand, name Lake Ladik and the Derinöz Stream as its source. On the Derinöz there is the Derinöz Dam, built for irrigation; this reservoir of 3.5 million cubic metres waters the Ladik Plain and part of the Suluova Plain.

In Hüsâmeddîn's description, the lake from which the stream issues is a large one about ten kilometres east of the town of Ladik, six kilometres long, three kilometres wide and some six metres deep. Six streams rising in the summer pastures of Seki, Kızoğlu, Polad, Çakır and Gümüş flow into it, and the water leaving the lake forms the river known as the Tersakan. The lake is famous for its fish and its reeds; fine mats are woven from the reeds, and the lake brings the area a considerable income. The author also notes that in his day the draining of the lake was being considered. The lake was not drained, and it is still named today as the stream's source.

Its Name and Older Names

The stream takes its name from the direction of its flow. The water leaving Lake Ladik turns first west, then south, and then east before it reaches the Yeşilırmak; these turns earned it the name Tersakan, meaning "the one that flows backwards". Hüsâmeddîn explains the name a little differently: in his view the stream was so called because it flows from north to south. He points out that in a work entitled Ahbârü'l-İbâd the river is recorded under the Arabic name "al-Nahr al-Maqlub", "the overturned river", and concludes from this that the name Tersakan had been current among the Turks since the first years of the conquest. In the Ikdü'l-Cümân, too, the "Nehr-i Maklûb" is explained as a river flowing from east to west and south. The two explanations differ in detail but agree in the observation that the stream traces an arc running against the general direction of the other waters of the region.

Hüsâmeddîn says that in older documents the stream is recorded under the names "Astifonos" and "İstiyotos", and takes the second to be a corruption of the Turkish word "Setit". These two names have not been found in any other source. The author also records that, because it damaged its surroundings in time of flood, the stream was also called "Deliçay", the Mad Stream. Today the name Deliçay is also used in the Amasya area for a separate watercourse, and this nickname of the Tersakan should not be confused with it.

One view that Hüsâmeddîn puts forward in the volume of his book on the Pontic period, however, conflicts with present knowledge. The author thinks that the river Lykos, named in the wars between Mithridates and Lucullus, "must be the stream we now call the Tersakan", and places the fortress where Mithridates gathered his army on the shore of Lake Ladik, which he regards as the river's source. In Strabo's description, however, the Lykos is the tributary that joins the Yeşilırmak below Amasya, in the plain of Phanaroia, and it is identified today with the Kelkit. Hüsâmeddîn's derivation of the name Lykos from the name of a local ruler is likewise one of the etymological interpretations of his time.

Havza and Ancere

One of the oldest towns on the banks of the Tersakan is Havza. Hüsâmeddîn describes it as a small town on the western bank of the Tersakan and argues that it is the city called Ancere or Hancere in Arabic sources. His basis is a passage in Zakariya al-Qazwini's Athar al-Bilad: according to al-Qazwini there is a city named Ancere in Anatolia, where the Tersakan river flows; it is related that in the year 442 of the Hijra (1050), on a Monday night in August, a terrible earthquake struck, the shocks continued into the following day, many buildings collapsed, a church sank into the ground, very hot water burst from the earth, ruining some seventy cultivated fields and drowning many people, the inhabitants fled to the mountain tops, and the hot water lasted nine days before it withdrew, some of it remaining in place. Noting that there is no city near the Tersakan other than Havza, and looking to Havza's hot springs, Hüsâmeddîn concludes that Ancere was Havza. The identification is the author's own inference; although the detail of the hot water in the account fits Havza's thermal springs, it has not been confirmed by any other document.

From Suluova to Amasya

The Tersakan enters Suluova at Eski Çeltek, curves to the right across the plain and joins the Yeşilırmak at Amasya. After meeting the Gümüşsuyu Brook around Suluova, it flows into the river north of Amasya. The stretch of the stream within the borders of Amasya Province is 41 kilometres. The Şeyhsuyu, Gümüşsuyu, Derinöz and Salhan streams are the Tersakan's main tributaries; on these tributaries lie the Gümüşhacıköy Plain, the Merzifon Plain and Suluova. Hüsâmeddîn writes that the stream also marks a boundary of the Taşan (today Tavşan) Mountain north of Merzifon: this massif, counted as the largest mountain of the sanjak after Akdağ, begins at the Tersakan Stream, runs from east to west and extends as far as the Kızılırmak at Osmancık.

The point of confluence is also used as a reference in describing the valleys of Amasya. In the classification of Amasya's valleys, the Beşgöz Valley is defined as the 8.5-kilometre stretch between Boğazköy and the point where the Tersakan flows into the Yeşilırmak. The Onlukköprü Valley begins where the Tersakan joins the river, passes through the townships of Ziyaret and Yenice and ends at the village of Kuzgeçe, a length of twenty kilometres; this is the valley known for growing the Amasya apple. The Tersakan thus joins the main bed at the very point where the river, having left the city, enters the valley filled with apple orchards.

In Hüsâmeddîn's day the stream flowed all year round, falling in summer and rising in spring, and many factories, mills, vineyards and gardens on both banks drew on it. In recent years the quality of its water has from time to time become a public matter. In January 2022, after dry seasons had brought the water level very low, white foam formed on the stream, especially along the Boğazköy stretch, and teams from the Provincial Directorate of Environment and Urbanisation took water samples to determine the cause. According to the report, foam and odour were also seen where the stream meets the Yeşilırmak; villagers nearby said they were wary of watering their fields and animals with this water, and a neighbourhood headman, stating that factory and animal waste from the Suluova area collected here, called for a treatment plant to be built at Boğazköy.

Old Bridges on the Stream

Hüsâmeddîn lists two old and well-known bridges on the Tersakan. The first is the Ziyare Bridge on the Ziyare road, near the point where the stream joins the Yeşilırmak. From the name "Mes'ud Bridge" found in old documents and from its architectural style, the author believes it was built by the Seljuk Sultan Mesud I. In his view the bridge is extremely solid and shows itself on every side to be a Seljuk work; in the span of its arch it resembles the Kuşköprü in the city, but its form is more graceful and more finely worked. The attribution rests on the author's inference; no inscription naming Sultan Mesud is mentioned.

The second is the Çeltek Bridge, at the end of Suluova where the Amasya and Merzifon roads part. Because the span of this single-arched bridge was narrow, its arch was very high and its back extremely steep. According to Hüsâmeddîn, the paved road, rebuilt again and again since 1300 of the Hijra (1882-1883), filled in and levelled both sides of the bridge, so that the arch sank and its top was flattened. Documents show that the bridge existed in 812 of the Hijra (1409-1410); its builder is unknown, and the author, judging from its height and architectural manner, dates it to the eighth century of the Hijra, that is, the fourteenth century. No reliable information beyond what Hüsâmeddîn gives has been found about these two bridges.

Discharge

The Tersakan is a much smaller watercourse than the Çekerek. Its highest measured discharge is 317 cubic metres per second, its lowest 0.021 cubic metres, and its mean 3.96 cubic metres. With a total annual flow of 125 million cubic metres, the stream usually floods in March, April and May, and also in summer because of downpours. The great gap between the mean and the peak shows that it is small in ordinary times but overflows in sudden rains; the nickname "Deliçay" comes from this temper. An academic study has also examined the return periods of the maximum daily flows that cause flooding in the basin. As irrigation water, the stream has been reported to be first class in alkalinity and second class in salinity, with a mean pH of 8.5.

The Suluova Plain and Yedikır

The real importance of the Tersakan lies in its being the stream that runs through the middle of the Suluova Plain and waters it. The plain, at an altitude of around 550 metres and covering some 40,000 hectares, makes up 7.3 per cent of the province's land. Its neighbour, the Merzifon Plain, at an average height of 700 metres and with an area of 31,100 hectares, is the third-largest plain in the province; the Gümüş Plain lies at 750 metres and covers 5,400 hectares. The water of all three plains comes from the tributaries of the Tersakan.

The present appearance of the plain is relatively recent. According to the district history, before 1950 a large part of the plain was covered with marshes and pools of standing water; because drainage was poor there were problems of groundwater and salinity, these conditions led to the spread of malaria, and the plain became uninhabitable in the summer months. Some families spent the summer in the pastures on the slopes of Akdağ, and in dry years there was famine. Agricultural development began in 1950 with the tractors and machinery distributed to farmers under the Marshall Plan; in the same years the marshes were drained and the poorly drained land was reclaimed. The Amasya Sugar Factory, which opened in 1954, established informed farming on the plain. The settlement became a sub-district under the name Suluca in 1902 and a district in 1957; orchards and poplar growing also developed after this period.

The second stage in the irrigation of the plain is the Yedikır Dam. Built as an earth-fill dam for irrigation in the Tersakan basin at Suluova between 1982 and 1985, it lies 7.5 kilometres from the Tersakan and takes its water through canals. With a volume of about 60 million cubic metres and a lake area of 5.93 square kilometres, it is the largest irrigation reservoir in the area. The lake holds rudd, carp and pike and is well suited to angling; the land to its northeast has been planted with pines. Large numbers of ruddy shelducks resting here outside the breeding season, and in winter waterfowl such as teal, mallard and great black-backed gull, make the lake an important wetland. The surrounding area of 817 hectares was declared a wildlife protection area and a first-degree natural site in 1989 and is protected as the Yedikuğular Bird Sanctuary. Thanks to the reservoir, Suluova turned to irrigated farming, and besides industrial crops, vineyards, gardens, fruit growing and vegetable growing became widespread.

The Tomb of Gani Baba

On the bank of the Tersakan, near the village of Saygılı, stands the Tomb of Gani Baba, one of the best-known places of pilgrimage in the area. Its position is given with small differences in the sources: some descriptions place it below the village, while in the list of Amasya's great Sufis drawn up by Osman Fevzi Olcay it is given as "north of Saygılı village, on the bank of the Tersakan River". In local tradition the man buried here is known as the warrior dervish Sheikh Abdülgani al-Khalwati, who came to Anatolia from Khorasan. Hüsâmeddîn likewise mentions "the Gani Tomb on the bank of the Tersakan Stream", ascribes it to Sheikh Abdülganî al-Khalwati, one of the great saints, and says it was a refuge for the sick. According to him, on spring days the area around the tomb filled with people and took on the look of a fair, not a day passed without a sacrifice, and the well-known Gani family of Amasya descended from this man.

A record in the biographical volume that Hüsâmeddîn devoted to the notable people of Amasya appears to link the tomb to a different past. According to it, Abdülganî Efendi of Merzifon, having completed his studies and received authorisation as a Sufi deputy from the Naqshbandi sheikh Abdüllatif of Amasya, came to the city in 946 of the Hijra (1539-1540) and began teaching; winning the trust of Prince Mustafa, then governor of Amasya, he became preacher of the Sultan Bayezid Mosque and the prince's sheikh. When the prince fell victim to his father's wrath in Shawwal 960 (1553), he was dismissed from his post, sent to Suluova, where he had a farm, and obliged to reside there. Building a masjid and a zawiya in his village, he became the person to whom the villages of Suluova turned; on the accession of Selim II in 974 (1566) he was allowed to return to Amasya, and he died on his farm in Shawwal 981 (1574). His sons and his daughter Ayşe Molla Hatun were also counted among the learned, and his descendants were called the "Ganîoğulları". The record ends by saying that his grave lay on the southern bank of the Tersakan River at Suluova and was a famous place of pilgrimage, that his village was nearby, that his daughter Ayşe Molla enlarged his masjid into a mosque and endowed her property to it, and that his farm came to be called "Ganîköyü". Because neighbouring biographies run into one another in columns in the digital text of the work, care is needed in sorting out which of these details belong to the same person. The Naqshbandi authorisation in this record also does not fit well with the epithet "al-Khalwati" in the first volume. That Gani Baba is this Abdülganî Efendi may therefore be considered a strong possibility, but it remains an inference, and it has not been possible to reconcile it with the tradition of the dervish from Khorasan.

Climate and Farming in Suluova

The district of Suluova lies about 25 kilometres west of Amasya at an altitude of 510 metres; its area is 516 square kilometres. It is surrounded on three sides by mountains that are not high, its highest point being Akdağ at 2,064 metres. Lying between the continental climate of Central Anatolia and the Black Sea climate, it has a transitional climate. The mean annual temperature is 12 degrees; the July mean has been measured at 21.5 and the January mean at 2.2 degrees. The first frosts come in November and the last in April, and snow falls mostly in the Akdağ area. The vegetation of the plain consists of orchards together with poplar and willow trees. Of the district's area, 276,370 decares are farmland, of which 170,820 decares are irrigated; dry farming is practised on the remaining 105,550 decares. The bed occupied by the Tersakan on the plain, together with stony and rocky ground, is counted as a separate item of 89,055 decares.

On the Merzifon Plain, irrigation is supplied by the Gümüşsuyu and Salhan streams, the Yüzüncüyıl and Alala ponds and the Yedikır Dam. The irrigation sources of the Gümüş Plain are the Gümüşsuyu, the Büyük Dere and the Kavşak Stream; much of that plain still needs irrigation. The Gümüşsuyu, one of the most important tributaries of the Tersakan, is the shared water of these two plains.

The Impact of the Two Tributaries on Amasya

The Çekerek and the Tersakan shape the geography of Amasya in two different directions. The Çekerek is a river that forms the Geldingen Plain in the south of the province and brings the water of a large basin, but whose water dwindles in summer; this is why its regulation by a dam matters both for flood control and for irrigation. The Tersakan, despite its small discharge, is a source that feeds the irrigation network of the Suluova, Merzifon and Gümüşhacıköy plains and is supported by artificial lakes such as the Yedikır Dam. The provincial records report that the Geldingen, Suluova, Merzifon and Gümüş plains cover about 24 per cent of the province's area and are its most important places for agriculture. That Amasya, despite its mountainous character, has fertile farmland with a microclimate, particularly around the Yeşilırmak valley between Amasya and Taşova, rests on this river system.

The history of the two streams follows the same duality. The name of the Çekerek is recorded along a line running from Hittite battle texts to Strabo's geography, as the river of a distant inland region; the Tersakan is a stream woven into the daily life of its immediate surroundings, from the hot springs of Havza to Seljuk bridges and the farms and zawiyas of Suluova. Because the figures given for length, source and discharge rest on measurements by different institutions, they may vary from source to source; the figures used here are those found in the provincial records.

Chronology

1420-1340 BC: Maşat Höyük (Hittite Tapigga) on the banks of the Çekerek is recorded as inhabited at least during these years.

Late 1st century BC - early 1st century AD: Strabo writes that the Iris takes in the Skylax, passes Amaseia and joins the Lykos.

1050 (AH 442): According to the account transmitted by al-Qazwini, a great earthquake and flood of hot water at Ancere on the Tersakan; Hüsâmeddîn identifies Ancere with Havza.

Around 1097 (AH 490): According to Hüsâmeddîn, the Afshar bey Baygeldi settles in the district of Geldiklan.

1409-1410 (AH 812): The date by which the Çeltek Bridge on the Tersakan is documented as existing.

1553 (AH 960): According to Hüsâmeddîn's biographical record, Abdülganî Efendi is sent to his farm at Suluova.

1574 (AH 981): Death of Abdülganî Efendi on his farm at Suluova.

1882-1883 (AH 1300): Beginning of the road works that filled in both sides of the Çeltek Bridge.

1902: Suluova becomes a sub-district under the name Suluca.

1930-1960: Floods of the Çekerek, the Tersakan and the Yeşilırmak repeatedly leave the city and the plains under water.

1950: Mechanised farming begins at Suluova and the marshes are drained.

1954: The Amasya Sugar Factory opens.

1957: Suluova becomes a district.

1973-1977: Excavations at Maşat Höyük; discovery of the Hittite tablets.

1977: Publication of Sedat Alp's study identifying the river Zuliya with the Çekerek.

1982-1985: Construction of the Yedikır Dam.

1989: The surroundings of Yedikır are declared a natural site.

1996-2004: Construction of the Süreyyabey (Çekerek) Dam.

2022: Foaming caused by pollution on the Tersakan during drought, and examination of water samples.

2026: The Süreyyabey reservoir rises from 20.6 to 42.7 per cent full.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

Official sources

Other sources

Online sources