A comprehensive study by Turkey’s disaster and emergency management authority (AFAD) has mapped a total of 739 sinkholes across the Konya closed basin, the government-run Anadolu Agency reported.

The finding underscores a slow-motion environmental crisis threatening the agricultural corridor, driven by decades of unchecked groundwater extraction, intensifying droughts and climate change.

Of the total count spanning the provinces of Konya, Karaman, and Aksaray, 702 sinkholes are concentrated in Konya alone. Karaman, meanwhile, hosts 29 and the remaining eight are located in Aksaray.

380 of the sinkholes in Konya are "well-type" cylindrical collapses. They are deep and sheer-walled shafts that have appeared almost entirely within the past three to four decades, directly tracing the surge in deep-well industrial farming.

The Konya basin produces wheat, sugar beet and corn. Its agricultural output has, meanwhile, come at a steep ecological cost. Lacking access to major river networks, farmers have increasingly relied on subterranean aquifers to irrigate water-intensive crops.

As water levels in underground limestone caverns drop precipitously, the hollowed-out subterranean geology loses its structural integrity, causing the surface layer to suddenly collapse into subterranean voids.

In 2014, a study conducted by World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Turkey found 100,000 wells in the region. 66,000 of them were illegal. Turkey is projected to become an officially "water-poor" country by 2030.

While the rate of newly opening sinkholes has moderated slightly in recent years, slowing from an average of roughly 20 per year to around ten, the overall inventory has expanded significantly as advanced technology exposes previously unmapped structural collapses.

The latest figures are the result of an ongoing AFAD initiative launched in 2020 to construct an "Sinkhole Sensitivity Map." The technological push has allowed authorities to register 126 sinkholes formed in Konya alone since 2020 while retrospectively identifying hundreds of older, undocumented formations tucked across vast swathes of rural terrain.

It was reported that 28 sinkholes formed in Konya in 2020, 28 in 2021, 14 in 2022, 12 in 2023, 32 in 2024, ten in 2025 and two so far this year.

Chart: AFAD data on sinkholes.

Beyond the recent human-induced collapses, the region is also home to approximately 50 ancient bedrock collapses that formed naturally over centuries. However, it is the rapid rise of deep cylindrical shafts near active farmland, irrigation infrastructure and residential settlements that poses an immediate risk to local supply chains and rural livelihoods.

Without stricter enforcement of water-extraction quotas, crop-pattern diversification away from thirsty produce and sustainable basin-wide water management, the structural integrity of the agricultural zone remains perilously frail.

For now, local communities live alongside a pockmarked landscape, a stark reminder that the water powering Anatolia’s agricultural engine is running dangerously low.