"We haven't had any real rain in the Istanbul area since late October," Meteorology Professor Selahattin Incecik of ITU, the Istanbul Technical University, told AFP. "Normally, December and January are the rainiest months in the region."

"Fresh water reservoirs around Istanbul are only half full and if it doesn't rain by February, the city will face huge problems," he said. "The authorities should have already begun to warn the population."

Save for a narrow strip of Alpine ranges in the far east of the country and the ever-humid eastern shores of the Black Sea, nearly the whole of Turkey has been experiencing one of its driest spells in memory, courtesy of a huge anti-cyclone that just won't go away.

On Turkey's western border with Greece, the flow of the Meric River (Maritsa in Greek) has dwindled from 730 to 100 cubic metres (25,550 to 3,500 cubic feet) per second, officials said. That of the Manavgat River in the south -- whose waters Turkey once planned to sell to Israel -- has been reduced by half.

In Bursa -- called "the Green" for its lushness -- the sole fresh water reservoir feeding the city of one million, 250 kilometres (155 miles) southeast of Istanbul, is only eight percent full, local officials reported.

In December 2006, average rainfall for Turkey was 73 percent below seasonal norms, at 26.1 millimetres (1.04 inch) instead of the usual 97.2 mm (3.9 inches), according to Weather Bureau figures.

The situation is particularly troubling in the fertile Cukurova valley, around the southern city of Adana, where rich fields of cotton and wheat have not seen rain in nearly three months.

"If it doesn't rain by the end of the month, the seedlings will dry up... Farmers will have to till already sown lands and start planting all over again," warned Ayhan Barut, chairman of the Adana Chamber of Agronomists.

Farmers in the region are reduced to begging for divine intervention at mass rain prayers in their fields and at local mosques, the semi-official Anatolia news agency reported.

In the high Anatolian plateau, crops face another threat.

"Nights are very cold in this region at this time of year and since there has been no snowfall to protect the earth, the cold and the icy winds are freezing the seedlings," explained Mikdat Kadioglu, head of ITU's Meteorology Department.

To blame, he said, is "global weather change".

"We have reached a stage where drought is turning into a socio-economic problem," Kadioglu told AFP. He urged the authorities to "start reducing water consumption right now".

Environmental protection groups say the time has more than come for Turkey to create a comprehensive and coherent blueprint for water management.

"Turkey lost half of its water resources during the past 40 years," complained Filiz Demirayak, who chairs the World Wildlife Fund in Turkey.

"Instead of continuing to consume water like there is no tomorrow, we should start to seriously worry about this weather, which is drying up our water resources," she said.

Agriculture Minister Mehdi Eker announced last week that he has set up a "drought management coordination committee".

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