The Salt Lake, Tuz Golu, is located about 120 kilometers south of Ankara, to Cappadocia. With its 1500 square kilometers is the second largest lake in Turkey, but in summer the surface is often reduced to about one thousan square kilometers.
Generally this amazing salt lake is 80 kilometers long by 48 wide, with a depth of 1.2 meters at present, as it is estimated that before it must be much deeper. Today, the surface is covered by blocks of salt up to 20 inches thick.
The Tuz Golu is a closed lake surrounded by plateaus. Its feeding sources are insufficient so that in summer, because of evaporation, the lake almost dried leaving only a layer of salt up to 30 centimeters above the residual mud. This is one of the higher salinity lakes in the world, with a 33%, so it is impossible to farm around it. Thus, the z Golu is one of the world’s richest natural salars, which gives 300 thousand tons of salt per year, 60% of all the production of the country. But this can only be collected in the months of July and August, when the lake is dry. Then only the top layers are collected to ensure that no mud get attached. The clean salt is separated into mounds that workers carry to the small transport trains.
