Happy World Water Day!

Today marks the 22^nd UN World Water Day. This year the theme is Water and Food Security, providing a great opportunity to look at this area of Turkey’s water policy.

Of course, agriculture (including irrigation) forms just one part of water policy, but holistic understanding of such a large and complex policy area (and system) requires careful analysis of each and every component.

An old woman works an irrigated plot in Mardin, SE Turkey 

Photo: Justin Vela

While the dam that threatens Hasankeyf will be used to feed a hydroelectric power (HEP) plant, the greater Ilısu project includes an irrigation dam at Cizre, which will also serve to control the dam’s tail waters. Turkey’s irrigation and HEP programmes have some striking commonalities, as illustrated by last year’s World Bank (WB) report on reform of Turkey’s irrigation sector.

The WB has for several decades been a major cheerleader for -- and sponsor of -- dam projects worldwide, particularly those relating to HEP. Today it remains the subject of criticism for its support of aggressive pro-dam development and related government policy. Nonetheless, it was fairly critical of Turkey, providing an extensive list of “what didn’t work” in irrigation reform:

• Management of irrigation has been devolved from the state to water user associations (WUAs): This process was found to have been hurried and lacking an adequate legal infrastructure.
• WUAs in poorer regions are unable to manage larger infrastructure, and many farmers struggle to afford operation & maintenance (O&M) costs.
• The State Waterworks Authority (DSİ) has made little progress in integrated water resources management, while it too cannot adequately fund O&M.
• Institutions working on irrigation are not fully integrated.

Similarly, Hasankeyf residents have complained of insufficient consultation on their relocation (and associated costs). Meanwhile a lack of coordination and failure to work at international standards echoes the government’s run-before-it-can walk approach to Ilısu or the burial of Allianoi.

So, this World Water Day, as Hasankeyf Matters we put our support behind moves toward an integrated, sustainable water policy that truly values Turkey’s human, cultural, historical, natural AND economic assets. We hope you do too.

--Helen

In pursuit of Allianoi…

Hasankeyf is not the first -- and sadly will not be the last -- historical monument in Turkey to be threatened with inundation by dam projects. Past victims include Zeugma (Commagene), many mosaics from which have been relocated to a museum in nearby Gaziantep, and Allianoi.

statue from the baths at Allianoi

In a talk sponsored by the Cultural Awareness Foundation, Assoc. Prof. Ahmet Yaraş of Trakya University addressed a packed auditorium in Istanbul to share details of the archaeological finds at this ancient spa settlement -- and the subsequent battle to protect the significant site from flooding by a nearby irrigation dam.

Exhibitions, a documentary (which the national TV station ultimately declined to screen), protests, court cases… No avenue was left unexplored, but ultimately efforts proved futile and excavations at the site, no more than 20 percent of which had been explored, were sealed with cement, backfilled with construction sand and covered by the dam’s waters. Over a year later, the dam has filled but infrastructure for the related irrigation system (to be privatized upon completion) will not be in place for a further two years, according to Yaraş.

While the outlook for threatened sites like Hasankeyf seems still bleaker in the face of Allianoi’s fate, one lesson to be learned from endeavors to save the ancient spa is the need for coordinated efforts to document, publicize and record threatened pieces of cultural heritage. Not just in an attempt to preserve or save them, but also in order that -- whatever their fate -- they not be forgotten.

--Helen