Euphrates river6/3/2023 ![]() Turkey may not currently be officially at war with North and East Syria – where Kurds and their allies have established an autonomous region – but in practice, Turkey’s war against the Kurds never stops. But what is happening now is more than selfishness. ![]() For decades, Turkish water policy has been characterised by a disregard for the needs of those downstream in Syria and Iraq. Geography has given Turkey control of more than 90% of the water that flows into the Euphrates and 44% of that in the Tigris. There are many international actors in the region and they cannot be unaware of what is happening. Meanwhile, Turkey denied any wrongdoing and accused the Kurds of deliberately causing the shortage. While this has been largely ignored by the mainstream media, it has been well chronicled by local media outlets. Instead, it is letting less than 200 cubic metres through to Syria, according to Kurdish authorities and NGOs, leading to a severe decline in the water levels and threatening a major humanitarian crisis. Most people are unaware that, since the end of January, Turkey has reportedly broken its 1987 agreement with Syria and Iraq to ensure a minimum flow of 500 cubic metres per second of the Euphrates River to Syria, 60% of which goes on to Iraq. And not if the nation holding back the water is a member of NATO. But not, it seems, if the people affected live in the unrecognised Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, known to many as Rojava. The deliberate withholding of water from hundreds of thousands of people should be headline news.
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