Turkey's Other Weapon Against the Kurds: Water

Turkey’s Other Weapon Against the Kurds: Water

Alexandra Marvar argues that Turkey uses water infrastructure as an instrument of political and military power over Kurdish communities and over its downstream neighbours. The Ilisu Dam on the Tigris, completed in 2019, is one part of the Southeastern Anatolia Project, a programme of dozens of dams that has sharply reduced river flow into Syria and Iraq, contributing to drought, failed harvests and damage to the Mesopotamian Marshes.

Marvar traces how Ankara used water agreements in the 1980s to pressure Syria and Iraq to restrict Kurdish groups, and how earlier dams displaced tens of thousands of people, most of them Kurds. Ilisu flooded Hasankeyf, a Kurdish heritage town inhabited for millennia, and displaced up to around 80,000 people. While Turkey presents the dam as a development, energy and irrigation project, activists from the Initiative to Keep Hasankeyf Alive see it as a tool to force Kurds into cities and weaken their communities.

Turkey never nominated Hasankeyf for UNESCO protection, and outside pressure failed to stop the project. Marvar concludes that in the region, control of water translates directly into power over others.

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