The signatories of the letter, addressed to the UN, among whom appear notable names mainly environmental activists and experts, along with other NGOs, officially implicated Turkey in building mammoth dams in a notorious Southeast Anatolia Project (Güneydoğu Anadolu Projesi, GAP) and for the subsequent droughts, chronic environmental impacts and other social and political unrest which affected lives of millions of farmers who had long been living on those lands in the downstream of the Tigris and Euphrates. The political chaos in Iraq and Syria has allowed little opportunity to either governments on these countries or civil society, if any, to address the issue in international responsible organizations and hold Turkey culpable in International Court of Justice or any other courts.
Fatemeh Zafarnejad, water and sustainable development affairs analyst told Mehr News Society correspondent that Turkey had built over 15 dams on Tigris and Euphrates origins; “only one such dam, Atatürk, reserves 50 billion cubic meters of water behind itself which exceed the sum of all Iranian dam capacities, which barely amount to 46 billion cubic meters; the Euphrates enters Syria from Turkey to irrigate Syrian desert and then enters Iraq only to drain to Hour al-Azim wetland. The Tigris directly flows from Turkey to Iraq which also drains to the wetland in its finish line of long journey,” she detailed. “Turkey allows only a fraction of original water quota which barely reaches Hour al-Azim and midway in its journey, it is a source of plight for the farmers living on the river for their agriculture.”
Zafarnejad added that the construction of the dam potentially threatened ancient civilizations and their relics in Syria, Mesopotamia, and southern Iran, where diverse ethnic groups had been living with symbiosis; “it also violates articles of UNCCD (United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification) and of UNDRIP (United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples),” she told Masoud Borbor, Mehr News Society correspondent.
The letter sparked reactions even in the most callous officials of the Department of Environment who are usually slow to react. Such a reaction came first from head of Public Participation Office of the Department of Environment who criticized long and deafening silence of the Ministry of Energy on the grave issue of GAP and its consequences for Iranian geography, purportedly to address the issue but in a tactic to pass the buck to another organization whose share of responsibility equaled its own. Mohammad Darvish is quick not to spare his reproaches to ‘experts of country’s water sector’ who “would wonder if building dams in the upstream of rivers could trigger desertification in the downstream regions and activate a spot from where the blinding dust and pernicious microorganisms arose.”
“A long and 15-year-old silence has strong motives for the Ministry of Energy to wisely sleep on any objection to Turkish government in its highly devastating GAP project, since the same Ministry of Energy has always advocated, wrongly or rightly, building dams, which in turn triggered gradual drying up of almost all Iranian plateau and subsequent disasters as land downdrafts; the same Ministry dried up Bakhtegan, Urmia, Atrak, Jazmourian, Dalaki, Mand, Minab, and Khuzistan hydrological ecosystems and is no longer in a position to hold responsible Turkish government to do the contrary and save the environment in downstream Tigris and Euphrates,” Darvish sourly commented.
A Telegram group of the public campaign called Lovers of Kind Zagros posted the letter and have been collecting signatures from environmental activists. “The GAP project dams will drastically change hydrological patterns governing the Tigris and Euphrates fertile alluvial plains in Iraq and Syria, rendering those villages utterly deserted, with no less important Hour al-Azim wetland also to be hit by the wind erosion and waves of dust to continue to affect Khuzistan and other western provinces of Iran,” the letter emphasized.
Signatories of the letter warned that apart from its impact on agriculture and drought, the GAP project would contribute to ever-present dust storms threatening southwest and central Iran, eventually rendering human settlements inhospitable enough to be abandoned.
The letter and ensuing movement should come as caveat to the government and foreign policy machine to act immediately through UNESCO and UN diverse mechanisms to mount pressures on Turkey on the issue and restore hope to the millions of dispirited farmers or the UN will turn a blind eye again to another environmental disaster to leave the people in the region to their own devices.
Report by: Masoud Borbor