This species is distinguished uniquely from all congeners by the presence of a dark brown

blotch on each side of the anal-fin base (vs. absence) and the position of anal-fin origin at a vertical of the tip of the dorsal fin when adpressed to the body (vs. anal-fin origin clearly behind vertical of tip of dorsal fin). It further differs from all congeners in the Middle East except Turcinoemacheilus hafezi by the more posterior position of the anus (distance from anus to anal-fin origin 0.1-0.4 times in distance from pelvic-fin to anal-fin origins). It can be separated from all its four congeners in the Middle East by having five fixed nucleotide substitutions in the mtDNA COI barcode region studied (Ref. 95534).