It’s about time: On the uneven temporalities of Turkey’s first mega-dam

This article examines the Keban Dam (1966–1974), Turkey’s first mega-dam on the Upper Euphrates, as a case study of the uneven temporalities embedded in energy infrastructures. Conceptualising the dam as an infrastructural chronotope, it shows how mega-dams mediate conflicting temporalities linked to Cold War geopolitics, state-led modernisation and global capital. Drawing on visual archives, state and World Bank documents and oral histories, the article traces Keban’s non-linear life cycle, marked by delay, improvisation, repair and dependence on western expertise. It argues that the dam’s celebrated ‘before/after’ narrative obscures temporal disjunctures between national futures imagined through electrification and the lived experiences of displaced populations. While Keban symbolised progress and sovereignty at the national scale, it simultaneously produced dispossession, stagnation and constrained futures for those flooded by its reservoir. By foregrounding these clashing temporalities, the article offers a critical perspective on mega-dams as infrastructures that both produce and fracture modern futures.