During the Gezi Park protests last month in Istanbul, Turks and Kurds dismissed historical mistrust and banded together against Prime Minister Erdogan’s growing authoritarianism. Some have suggested the newly unifying cause has strengthened momentum for a long-standing solution to Kurdish autonomy and rights in Turkey. Still it may be water that the fate of Kurdish ambitions is most tied to, rather than officials in Ankara or protestors in Istanbul. The Southeastern Anatolia Project, or Guneydogu Anadolu Projesi (GAP) in Turkish, is one of the largest river basin development projects in the world and the largest single development project carried out by Turkey. It includes 13 irrigation and hydropower schemes, involving the construction of 22 dams and 19 hydroelectric power plants on both the Tigris and the Euphrates. Upon completion it is expected to provide up to 25 percent of the country’s electricity. However, it is also a hotbed of controversy. Turkey’s Kurdish population, which represent 90 percent of the population living in the area affected by the GAP, claims that promised economic and social gains have yet to bear fruit and the GAP is simply another effort by Ankara to subvert their ethnic identity. Meanwhile Syria and Iraq argue they haven’t been consulted on the project, as experts warn that downstream food security and water supplies will be negatively affected by new dams and reservoirs. Seeds of Discontent The Tigris and Euphrates river basins have long been vital to Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and the Kurdish people. However, it was Turkey in the 1930s under Kemal Ataturk that first seized the opportunity to develop the potential of the two rivers’ water resources in a major way. Ataturk’s hope was to better integrate eastern Anatolia into the rest of Turkey and generate economic development through the construction of irrigation projects. This vision began to materialize in the form of the GAP in the 1960s under the leadership of Suleiman Demirel, a well-respected politician and trained engineer. Beyond electricity, the regional development project – expected to be finished in 2015 – is projected to generate up to 200,000 employment opportunities, both during the construction period and following the commissioning of all infrastructure. For the agricultural sector, the GAP is expected to bring two million new hectares of land under irrigation, potentially making Turkey an exporter of agricultural goods. Furthermore, the government is looking to address education and inequality issues, including women and girls’ literacy, with the hope that increased participation in entrepreneurial activities follows – all tremendous boons in one of the most economically under-developed areas of the country. USDA GAP map, TurkeyHowever, one of the underlying assumptions behind the project was that it would also help resolve the Kurdish issue. Of Turkey’s approximately 72 million people, between 13 and 14.2 million are Kurds, the majority of which live in the south-eastern provinces. As the largest minority ethnic group and due to past government policies denying their unique identity, they have been struggling for more rights and autonomy for decades. Despite the post-World War I Treaty of Sèvres stipulating that “a scheme of local autonomy should be drafted for the predominantly Kurdish areas lying east of the Euphrates,” after the creation of the modern state, Kemal Ataturk introduced legislation whereby no minority had the right to claim cultural independence. The government developed strict linguistic policies, whereby, until 2001, the use of Kurdish in schools and the media was banned under the pretext that it fostered separatist ideology. The lift of the ban created a platform for debate on identity politics; however, the underlying issues remain unresolved as evidenced by agricultural education programs still being taught in Turkish, not Kurdish. Slow socio-economic development, inexistent property rights, and feudalistic structures have also exacerbated inequalities, inciting popular discontent along the way. For example, small farmers do not usually own their land but work for an agha, or large landowner, and most of the agha support the central government in Ankara. The destruction caused by GAP projects, such as the Ilisu dam, further rallies critics against Ankara, as it is seen by some as part of an effort by the government to eliminate Kurdish culture. Historical sites, like the city of Hasankeyf, will be destroyed while resettlement plans, although abiding to international standards, may leave many displaced people without compensation due to the lack of institutional capacity to document land rights. Worst of all, so far, GAP has not produced the infrastructure, productivity, or security gains that many expected. Parts of the region still lack reliable electricity supply. Agriculture has failed to modernize. Feudalistic land ownership structures have become more entrenched, not less, with large landowners diversifying their holdings and smallholders, predominantly Kurds, still lacking access to credit. Repressive policies from Ankara, lack of economic opportunities, and corruption incidents involving public officials have in turn created a support base for the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party), the largest Kurdish insurgent group in Turkey. Since the early 1980s, the PKK has fought a guerilla war for an independent Kurdistan. In the 1990s, counter-insurgency even bled over into development policy when the government decided to build 11 dams in the Hakkari and Simak provinces in order to prevent PKK fighters from crossing the mountains from Iraq. After the capture of PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan in Kenya in 1999, the number of violent incidents declined considerably, however the conflict remains at the forefront of regional politics. Despite the announcement of a ceasefire and planned withdrawal to Iraq for many of the PKK’s fighters in March, southeastern Anatolia and the GAP region continue to be militarized, exacerbating tensions, as on June 28 in Lice when Turkish soldiers reportedly opened fire on Kurdish demonstrators protesting against the building of a gendarmerie post.
Posted on: Mon, 02 Sep 2013 09:11:57 +0000
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