The Konya-Karaman Plain is a plain in the Central Anatolia Region of Turkey, associated with the Konya and Karaman Provinces. It is a flat plain (a height of 900–1050 m) that covers the majority of Konya Basin and constitutes the main part of the Central Anatolian Plateau.
The plain is one of the driest areas in Turkey. To alleviate it, a major irrigational Konya Plain Project was launched in 2012. The project includes 14 irrigation, three potable water and one energy investments, including the Blue Tunnel Project and the Bagbasi Dam.[1]
The plain is dominated by the Çarşamba river, which forms a delta in its centre.
The Konya-Karaman Plain did not possess resources which prehistoric and early historic human communities there required, such as timber, metal, chipped stone, and ground stone, which pushed its inhabitants to develop procurement networks in as early as the 9th millennium BC, with these networks continuing to exist in the Bronze and Iron Ages.
The Konya-Karaman Plain was also one of the driest regions Anatolia during the Holocene, especially during the later Holocene corresponding to the 2nd and 1st millennia BC, which would have forced the local populations to develop sophisticated water management practices.
The earliest appearance of irrigation there possibly dates to the 3rd millennium BC, which in turn led to the spread of settlement throughout the steppe region of the plain when human settlements had previously been restricted to the alluvium of the rivers.
The Çarşamba river which dominates the plain was referred to as the Ḫūlaya River (Hittite: {{cuneiform|ana|) at the time of the Hittite Empire, while the surrounding lands were called the Ḫūlaya River Land (Hittite: {{cuneiform|ana|).
The plain is of considerable archaeological interest, including an important neolithic archaeological site of Çatalhöyük is located within the plain.[2]
Oriental Institute archaeologists unearthed a lost ancient kingdom dating to 1400 BC to 600 BC near the Türkmen-Karahöyük site in 2020, which might be connected to Tarḫuntašša and its king Hartapu. A document written in Luwian hieroglyphs that describes Hartapu's victory over Phrygia was discovered in 2019 by researchers from the University of Chicago and the Konya Regional Archaeological Survey Project.[3] [4] [5]