By late September 2025 the lakebed was cracked earth. Bahri Çoban, who lives in the nearby Çavuşçu neighbourhood, blamed several dry years together with uncontrolled flood irrigation. According to reports at the time, around 70 to 80 bird species left once the water was gone.
Then the rain returned. By April the lake held 16 million cubic metres of water, and by early July about 30 million, according to the environmental volunteer and nature photographer Önder Metin. Teams from the District Agricultural Department restocked the lake with fish, and the birds followed the water back.
Abooğlu says the authorities handled it well. He hopes the lake will keep getting better and more beautiful. His requests to visitors are practical ones. Do not fish with rods yet, because the new fish are still small. Do not leave litter. Do not draw water from the lake for illegal irrigation.
The lake has never been left entirely to nature. It lies 1,026 metres above sea level. When full it covers about 27 square kilometres, but it is only about two metres deep on average. In the late 1960s the State Hydraulic Works built embankments on its northern and southern shores and turned it into a reservoir for the Ilgın and Atlantı plains. Since then it has filled each winter with snow and rain and shrunk each summer as the fields draw on it. Before the embankments, the marshland at its northern end was called Kurugöl, which means "Dry Lake".
The water supports more than carp and crayfish. Pelicans, flamingos and cormorants feed there, and moustached warblers have bred in the reeds. The lake is also home to two small fish that occur naturally only in inland Anatolia: the killifish Aphanius villwocki and Pseudophoxinus anatolicus. When the water disappears, these fish have nowhere else to go.
That is why Abooğlu's requests matter. The lake has come back once, but it is still shallow and it is still used for irrigation. For now he is simply asking people to be patient while the fish grow.