Mideast Water Crisis Produces Region's First Water Refugees

A two-part series by NPR focuses on the Middle East's worst water crisis in decades as a result of climate change, drought and mismanagement. The series focuses on the headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which affects Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon and the fact that this already troubled region is confronting a new phenomenon: water refugees.

Contrary to popular perception, water seldom is the single cause for violent conflict, but it certainly can accelerate and exacerbate tensions. Perhaps, the latest example in the region is Yemen, whose multiple conflicts are enhanced by a falling water table and acute water shortage. Water plays a key role in Turkey's relations with Iraq and Syria, who believe that Turkey uses its control of the Tigris and Euphrates head waters as a tool to realize its regional ambitions. NPR reports:

"Syria and Iraq blame Turkey's huge network of dams on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers for reducing water supplies by 50 percent.Turkey is the site of the headwaters of a river system that Syria and Iraq depend on. An informal agreement determines the flow downstream.

'When we had bad relations with Turkey, they reduced the flow of water despite the agreement, and now, thank God, we have excellent relations with Turkey, and hopefully, we will not see any cutoff of water,' Syrian economist Nabil)Sukkar says.

Turkey says there is enough water for everyone, but Syria and Iraq waste their share. (Hussein) Amery, (a Middle East water management expert and professor at the Colorado School of Mines. says the Turks are partly right. 'The issue is water but it goes far beyond water, he says. Amery says the key to head off a water crisis is more efficient management of a scarce resource. But he adds politics, not climate, is the problem. A lot of Arabs believe that Turkey is trying to assert itself as a regional superpower,' he says, "and water is being used as a tool to advance that interest"....

In Turkey, Gun Kut, a water expert at Istanbul's Bogazici University, expresses an often-heard criticism in response to Arab complaints: 'Quit wasting the water and there will be enough for everybody.' Kut says outdated farming techniques and bad water management decisions waste a dwindling resource. 'Simply insisting on others to release more and more water while the population is going up, the need for food is going up, won't work,' he says."

Indeed, for much of Turkey's modern history, Turkey viewed its control of the head waters of the Tigris and the Euphrates as a Turkish resource much like oil is an Arab resource. With other words, it was Turkey's right to control access to the rivers' waters. Former Turkish President Suleiman Demirel did not mince words, when he in 1992 inaugurated the Ataturk Dam, part of the Southeastern Anatolia Project, one of the world's biggest irrigation and electric power schemes. "We have a right to do anything we like," Demirel said at the dam's opening ceremony.

That attitude, however, may be changing as Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayip Erdogan seeks to position his country as a regional superpower. In a sign that Turkey is seeking cooperation rather than confrontation, Turkey and Syria agreed in the first week of January to joint management of some water resources.