The water dispute has been used as a weapon against Turkey mainly by Syria and Iraq, with the former hosting for decades Abdullah Öcalan, the jailed leader of Turkey's outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), before he was captured, with US help, in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1999. Similarly, Iraq, under now-hanged leader Saddam Hussein, allowed the Kurdish dominated northern Iraq to become a safe haven for PKK terrorists, who then infiltrated into Turkey to attack security forces and civilians. Turkey pursued ill-defined policies in its decades-long fight against the PKK.
Water is a scarce commodity in the Middle East, standing as one of the major sources of conflict in the region. Back in 2000, during a water conference in Cairo, then Syrian Minister of Irrigation Abdul Rahman al-Madani underlined that water was still one of the reasons behind the Syrian-Israeli conflict, this in addition to the Israeli occupation of the Golan Heights. He, together with the Iraqi delegation, fiercely opposed Turkish plans (now stalled) to sell water to Israel.
The Euphrates flows from Turkey through Syria before reaching Iraq while the Tigris comes straight down from Turkey to Iraq. Turkey has built hydroelectric dams on the Euphrates that have reduced the flow of water in recent years.
Syria and Iraq, at odds from time to time on several political issues, have, however, forged a unified stance against Turkey for years on water on both international and Arab platforms, preventing further dams from being built on both the Euphrates and Tigris rivers. Similarly, they prevented Turkey's water sale to Israel. Syria also blocked the Orontes (Asi) River, originating from its soil, from flowing to Turkey.
Using the PKK as a trump card against Turkey as a means to solve the water dispute has always been one of the top foreign policy strategies of both Syria and Iraq.
The water dispute, however, is no longer a contentious issue, despite the fact that the problem persists, because Turkey has improved ties with both Iraq and Syria over the past several years.
Turkish-Syrian ties have improved considerably since the 1999 Adana agreement was signed, under which Damascus pledged to not extend support to the PKK. Since then, Turkey and Syria have forged cooperation in every sphere. Similarly, Turkey last year signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Iraq, and Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu made his first trip to Baghdad since taking office in May this week to deepen cooperation.
In March 2008, Turkey, Syria and Iraq decided to bury the hatchet over water issues and cooperate by establishing a water institute that will comprise 18 water experts from each country to work toward the solution of water-related problems among the three. The institute intends to conduct studies for the fair and effective use of trans-border water resources.
Syria and Turkey also came to a point of deciding to jointly construct a dam on the Orontes River, over which they have had a dispute for decades.
In the past several months, however, there has been an increase in reports of Iraqi complaints about the reduced amount of water flowing from the Euphrates in particular.
Are we again back to square one, reminiscent of the years in which the three countries engaged in serious diplomatic rows on water and the PKK issue taking center stage? With this in mind, the headline of a story the Christian Science Monitor published on Tuesday, Aug. 11, from Baghdad, reading, “Turkey offers water for Iraqi crackdown on Kurdish rebels,” was interesting.
After talks in Baghdad, Davutoğlu on Tuesday pledged to release more water from the Euphrates River to its drought-ravaged neighbor. Iraq, meanwhile, announced plans to crack down on the PKK on the Turkish border, the story added.
Although relations between Turkey, Syria and Iraq have come to a point incomparable to their past enmity, the PKK continues to hijack Turkey's space to maneuver on foreign policy issues, as can be seen from the latest talks between Turkey and Iraq.
If Turkey cannot take a determined stance against nations such as China, for example, on its latest crackdown on Uighur Turks in Xinjiang province, this is mainly because of its PKK problem. Though China is mistaken in making comparisons between Uighurs and the PKK, Beijing still uses the PKK as a trump card against Turkey.
The PKK problem comes up as a serious roadblock before Turkey's democratization and constrains its room to maneuver on many foreign policy issues. This alone stands as important proof that the current Turkish government's efforts to solve its Kurdish problem to lessen the PKK effect are vital.
