Tuz Gölü with an area of 1,500 sq.km/580 sq.miles and the second largest of Turkey's inland lakes lies about 100km/62mi northeast of Konya in the heart of the Anatolian highlands at an altitude of 905m/2,968ft. Lying amid the treeless cereal-producing steppes, this salt lake occupies the major part of the Tuz Gölü basin. The lake is no deeper than 2m/6ft, but its surface area can change quite considerably depending on seasonal variations in rainfall.
In the summer months it can often dry up completely as temperatures of 40°C/104°F cause evaporation on a massive scale. Often a 30cm/12 inch deposit of almost pure cooking salt remains. Salt has been collected from here by even the very earliest settlers. The two nationalised salt works at Cihanbeyli and Sereflikoçhisar produce 150,000t/147,630 tons which make up about a quarter of Turkey's total salt production and supply the country's own needs.
Layers of salt and deposits from the early Tertiary period can often be found on the edges of the salt lake and these provide evidence that the high salt content of 23% (a near saturated salt mixture in which the salt crystallises in the solution) is not primarily due to the internal drainage of the lake but to the high salt content of the subsoil.
It is possible to demonstrate that the water level during the Ice Age, or more precisely the so-called Pluvial period, was much higher than it is now and that the lake probably contained fresh water, as at that time the water drained to the northeast into the River Kizilirmak. The lake has been shrinking for about 15,000 years.
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