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Turkey is reportedly depriving hundreds of thousands of people of water
By:   []
Date: None

The deliberate withholding of water from hundreds of thousands of people should be headline news. But not, it seems, if the people affected live in the unrecognised Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, known to many as Rojava. And not if the nation holding back the water is a member of NATO.

Most people are unaware that, since the end of January, Turkey has reportedly broken its 1987 agreement with Syria and Iraq to ensure a minimum flow of 500 cubic metres per second of the Euphrates River to Syria, 60% of which goes on to Iraq. Instead, it is letting less than 200 cubic metres through to Syria, according to Kurdish authorities and NGOs, leading to a severe decline in the water levels and threatening a major humanitarian crisis.

While this has been largely ignored by the mainstream media, it has been well chronicled by local media outlets. Meanwhile, Turkey denied any wrongdoing and accused the Kurds of deliberately causing the shortage.

There are many international actors in the region and they cannot be unaware of what is happening. Their silence amounts to complicity.

Weaponising water

Geography has given Turkey control of more than 90% of the water that flows into the Euphrates and 44% of that in the Tigris. For decades, Turkish water policy has been characterised by a disregard for the needs of those downstream in Syria and Iraq. But what is happening now is more than selfishness. Turkey may not currently be officially at war with North and East Syria – where Kurds and their allies have established an autonomous region – but in practice, Turkey’s war against the Kurds never stops. The nation is now weaponising the water of the Euphrates, knowing that withholding water is a war crime.

In a region where temperatures often exceed 35°C, and in the middle of a pandemic, water is in limited supply, is hard to access, and is increasingly polluted and infected.

Due to the diversion of water, 30 out of 200 pumping stations no longer work, and others are operating at half capacity, reports the Rojava Information Center, a local news agency. In many places, water is having to be brought by tankers. Half a million people have already been left without safe drinking water, and a further 5 million have been put at risk of losing access. Some who can afford it have paid for new deep wells, but these threaten to deplete groundwater reserves.

This region was once the breadbasket of Syria, but agriculture has been badly hit by a lack of water, and wheat may now have to be imported for both flour and seed. Unusually low rainfall has made the lack of irrigation even more devastating.

[1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/north-africa-west-asia/turkey-reportedly-depriving-hundreds-thousands-people-water/