Below you will find the summary of the summer expedition that took place in southeast of Turkey with 12 caves discovered which 3 of them mapped and one of them has a potential to go deep as far as -700-800 m.
In July 2009, ASPEG has organised a trip to southeast of Turkey where only MTA (state institute of metallurgy with caving department) has made some exploration around the region and found 7 caves and mapped them. With MTA suggestions and after MADAG (Middle East University Cave Diving Club) made a trip to an water filled large doline and heard rumors that the water is fed by the sinkhole at the mountain, months later, ASPEG and MADAG organized a joint expedition to the region where MADAG continued with the diving exploration and ASPEG made first attempts to explore the sinkhole with a potential of -700-800 m’s. MADAG dove to -40 m where the doline branches into galleries which one of them is impassable. ASPEG on the other hand split into two teams where one team searched for other caves and found 11 of them which 2 of them is mapped. The other team penetrated the sinkhole with a success to -175 m where the team left at huge pit with wide gallery continues. Unfortunately, team didnot have enough time to go deeper and decided to map the cave and return home. ASPEG and MADAG will continue to explore the sinkhole, the doline and the connection between them. We will come back to continue the exploration in july or August 2010.
ASPEG expedition team: Murat Egrikavuk, Ali Yamac, Barbaros Acarturk, Engin Selamsız, Nuray Sahin, Murat Sahin, Ali Ethem Keskin, Emine Azak and Ludmilla Buyum.
MADAG expedition team: Fatih Sen, Hande Yapıcı, Volkan Evrin, Orhan Temuçin, Doruk Dündar, Gökçen Fidan, Mustafa İkiz, Murat Salmanoğlu, Baha Dincel and Cihan Yildirim