Natural Resources Law - Heisel

To Build a Nation with Concrete

The Southeastern Anatolia Project and Turkeys Modernization Efforts

Asher Kohn April 20, 2012

Above: Map of Turkey, available at http://chinabangk.com/images/cartes/turquie.jpg Below: Map roughly emphasizing Southeast made by author based off image, available at http://www.nationsonline.org/maps/turkey-map.jpg.

Images on this page given by friend of author, displaying cross and over views of Karakaya Dam.

- INTRODUCTION When Turkey became a constitutional republic in 1923, it did so as the rump state of a polyglot and multiconfessional empire. Kemal Ataturk took control of a new and largely Anatolian state and he made a point to bring it into 20th Century Europe with full force. The idea of damming the Tigris and Euphrates rivers to boost agricultural production in the semiarid steppes came from Ataturk himself.1 However, those steppes in question were hardly devoid of humanity. The Turkish state knew this, as the government began a massive and at times brutal mission civilatrice in the hills around Dersim soon after independence.2 The dam project was ultimately shelved until 1983, when the Southeast Anatolian Project (GAP) was born3. A new government under a new constitution would shed Turkeys insular image. Turgut zal took the presidency after a 1980 military coup and promised an economic opening, to turn the country into a Little America.4 One of his goals would be to open his countrys East much like the United States did to its West at the end of the 1800s. Unfortunately for Turkey, a lot had changed in the intervening century, and there are plenty of differences between the American West and the Turkish East. Kurdish tribes were far less diffuse then American Natives.5 The past three decades have seen successes and failures in the GAP, and nuance must be noted. The massive project has not been an unqualified success or failure, no matter what metric. But it is interesting to note that the human impact of the project,

Donald Smith, Protests Grow Over Plans For More Turkish Dams, National Geographic News (Dec. 1, 2000), available at http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2000/12/1201_turkey.html. 2 See generally, Martin van Bruinessen, The Suppression of the Dersim Rebellion in Turkey (1937-38) Conceptual and Historical Dimensions of Genocide 141 (George Andreopoulos, ed., University of Pennsylvania Press: 1994), available at http://www.let.uu.nl/~Martin.vanBruinessen/personal/publications/Dersim_rebellion.pdf. 3 Id.; GAP stands for Gneydou Anadolu Projesi, Southeast Anatolian Project in Turkish. For ease of use, GAP will be used to refer to the project for the remainder of this paper. 4 Malik Mufti, A Little America: The Emergence of Turkish Hegemony, MIDDLE EAST BRIEF 1 (May 2011), available at http://www.brandeis.com/crown/publications/meb/MEB51.pdf. 5 Chris Houston, KURDISTAN: CRAFTING OF NATIONAL SELVES 81 (Berg: 2008).

whether purposefully or not, has completely changed local lifestyles and economics in the region. This paper will discuss the economic, social, and environmental aspects of GAP, aiming to give a multi-dimensional view of a project often only seen through a pre-conceived frame.

- HISTORICAL BACKGROUND Until the 1980 Coup, Turkey was a statist and isolationist country; quite a feat for the straddler of continents. The Six Arrows of Kemalism were founded on a fear of external manipulation.6 As well-grounded as this fear was, what with the past century's history of foreign bank dominance and imperial predation, it was simply untenable as the Cold War loomed. Turkey joined NATO in 1952 after staying neutral during WWII (neutrality that required, at one point, the foreign minister theatrically turning his hearing aid off during negotiations) and became a bulwark against communism.7 From the late 1960's into the next decade, however, civil violence became an unavoidable part of life.8 Leftists against nationalists, Islamists against secularists, and anarchists against everyone brought death and destruction into Turkish city life.9 Rural unrest and banditry was largely ignored up through the 1950's, but all of the sudden there were bombings at monuments, shootings at universities, and even assassinations targeted at ambassadors and parliamentarians.10 How much international involvement was present in

Sedat Laciner, Turgut Ozal Period in Turkish Foreign Policy: Ozalism, 2 USAK YEARBOOK OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS AND LAW 153 (2009), available at http://www.turkishweekly.net/article/333/turgut-ozal-period-in-turkishforeign-policy-ozalism.html. 7 Id. 8 Erik Jan Zrcher, TURKEY: A MODERN HISTORY 263 (I.B. Tauris Publishers: 2004). 9 Id. at 264; A good description of the feelings of unrest, fear, and anarchy can be found in BLACK BOOK [Turkish: KARA KITAP] by Orhan Pamuk. 10 Hamit Bozarslan, Why the Armed Struggle? Understanding the Violence in Kurdistan of Turkey THE KURDISH CONFLICT IN TURKEY 18 (Ferhad Ibrahim and Glistan Grbey, Eds., LIT Verlag Mnster: 2000); Yaar Kemals epic MEMED, MY HAWK [Turkish: INCE MEMED] talks about rural violence in Turkey, though it does not explicitly mention the political or ethnic dimensions.

General Kenan Evren's tank-backed claim on power is still unclear.11 The forces of capitalism, however construed, breathed relief when Evren went on state radio to declare martial law on September 12, 1980.

- COUP ECONOMICS The military tabbed Turgut zal to be their economic advisor as they took power and formed a new Constitution.12 zal is a fascinating figure; trained as an electrical engineer, he studied in the United States and was a former World Bank employee, focusing on all stops on electrification projects and utility management.13 The new Constitution and legal framework kept Kemalist statism in place but opened Turkey up to international aid and development.14 Privatepublic partnerships bloomed and foreign direct investment skyrocketed as the military stabilized the cities while zal stabilized the economy. And although the military tribunals and counterrevolutionary operations left an indelible scar from which Turkey is only now recovering, 15 zal's economic plan brought in a tide of cash that successfully floated all ships. The renewed Kemalism saw itself as democratic, pro-American, and pro-Capitalist. zal was able to capitalize on newfound peace, invigorated infrastructure and low cost of labor to turn Turkey into an export terror, raising export sales from $ 2.9 billion in 1980 to over $ 20 billion in

11

Serdar Celik, Turkeys Killing Machine: The Contra-Guerilla Force in KURDISTAN REPORT (1994), available at http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/51/017.html; Any discussion of American involvement in foreign coup dtats will go down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theory quite quickly. The CIA Ankara Station Chiefs decision to send a cable to Washington, DC stating Our boys did it does not help matters. 12 Turgut Ozal Period in Turkish Foreign Policy; Turkey has had coups in 1960, 1971, 1980, and 1994. They have had new constitutions made in 1924, 1961, and 1982. There is currently talk of a new Constitution being written within the next electoral period. 13 Turgut Ozal Period in Turkish Foreign Policy 14 Id. 15 Sebnem Arsu, Turkey: Aging Generals Face Trial for Violent 1980 Military Coup, in The New York Times (Apr. 4, 2012).

the early 1990s, with an annual increase of 15,6 %; a staggering 350 % increase in 10 years.16 This was not just agriculture but white goods, automobiles, and more heavy industry.17 Exports to the US went from $127 million in 1980 to $971 million by 1989.18 Imports from the US tripled over the same period, even if this was mostly arms and military technology.19 It may come as a surprise that newfound wealth was actually directed away from the autocrats of the pre-coup days. As Turkey acceded to European banking structures, rural and lower-class individuals were able to buy land and had access to loans.20 Many of today's largest holding companies date back to a grandfather who made his fortune in some dusty backwater during this time.21 These dusty backwaters, perhaps, became less dusty; the Anatolian Tigers saw rapid urbanization (the cause of which will be discussed later on) and new construction of highways, airports, and deep seawater ports. Turkey was no longer Istanbul, Izmir, and Ankara but now stretched from Thrace to the USSR. This meant a new opening and a new imagining of the Southeast. Most importantly, GAP was turned from a hydropower project into a fully integrated sustainable development and land reform program. Before the Coup, Turkey was dominated by State Economic Enterprises, state monopolies that towered over private enterprise.22 The State Economic Enterprises were largely

16 17

Turgut Ozal Period in Turkish Foreign Policy. Id. 18 Id. 19 Id. 20 Competitiveness Agenda for the GAP Region 52 (UNDP: 2008), available at http://www.undp.org.tr/povRedDocuments/Competitiveness_Agenda_Report.pdf. 21 Sabanc Holding, a multi-billion dollar conglomerate, is descriptive; Haci Omer Sabanci represented one of Turkey's greatest rags-to-riches stories. When Sabanci was five years old, his father died; at the age of 14, Sabanci left his village, Akakaya, in the Kayseri region, to seek work in the cotton fields of Adana, reportedly making the entire 450-kilometer journey by foot. Sabanci found work as a worker on a cotton plantation. By 1925, Sabanci had begun sharecropping his own plot of land, and by 1932 Sabanci had saved up enough money to invest in a cotton gin, irir Fabrikasi. available at http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/Haci-Omer-SabanciHoldings-AS-Company-History.html. 22 V.P. Duggal, A Review of the State Economic Enterprises in Turkey 40 ANNALS OF PUBLIC AND COOPERATIVE ECONOMICS 469, 471 (2007).

streamlined or privatized, and GAP was no different, as it could no longer rely on Turkey Iron and Steel Business or the State Office Materials Supply for assistance.23 zal coined the term and created the concept of a Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) model of foreign investment and construction suited for Turkey.24 BOT is the concession from a state to a private company to finance, construct, and operate a project before eventually transferring it to the state at the end of the concession agreement.25 In many cases around the world, this is an opportunity for private equity to work with contractors to plunder a country, reaping as much out of the land before returning to their home offices in London or New York with (what are hopefully metaphorical) suitcases full of cash.26 zal was able to rely on a business-friendly legal system (he helped write the Constitution) that was able to assuage consortiums risks and was designed to promote the BOT agreements zal imagined. zal must have seen many such projects in his time at the World Bank. zal believed BOT agreements were effective as they lessened the requirement for huge loans on behalf of the country, loans Turkey may not have been able to afford and was certainly skeptical of acquiescing to. Again, zal had seen countries enter a form of debtors prison in order to modernize, and had no such interests for his homeland. The new Constitution was hailed as a victory for capitalism, one that would integrate Turkey into the world economy and open channels of development.27 Turkeys civil code is built upon French and Swiss traditions, but the

23

Sven B. Kjellstrm, PRIVATIZATION IN TURKEY 61-62 (World Bank Publications) (1990). These are just two of the 33 Enterprises then listed. 24 Turgut Ozal Period in Turkish Foreign Policy. 25 Ahmad Kreydieh, Risk Management in BOT Project Financing 9 (MIT: 1996). 26 See generally: Paul Handley, A Critical View of the Build-Operate-Transfer Privatisation Process in Asia 19 ASIA JOURNAL OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS 203 (1997), available at http://www.thaigoodgovernance.org/upload/content/217/PRIVATISATION%20PROCESS%20IN%20ASIA.pdf. 27 Burhan Ekinci, 12 Eyll sermayenin darbesiydi [September 12 was capitals coup], Radikal (Sep. 12, 2008), available at http://taraf.com.tr/haber/12-eylul-sermayenin-darbesiydi.htm.

banking system had always lagged behind its aspirations.28 The Coup brought rigor into a lackadaisical system, which was enough to inspire approval and trust from the companies with which zal desired to do business.29 With a law code based on European norms and a public figure like zal at the helm, financing for GAP was much easier to come by than it had been for many other projects throughout the world. GAP FINANCING AND SCOPE GAP is conceived as a concert of 22 dams and 19 hydroelectric plants that will hold 15 million cubic meters of water behind its gates.30 Currently, nine of those dams are holding back 8 million cubic meters.31 Its a tremendous work of architecture, engineering, and infrastructural genius, and it came at a price. The projected total cost is over $32 billion, with $18.6 billion already paid.32 The bureaucracy alone consists of 27 largely independent agencies which require nearly $100 million combined in administration costs.33 Although foreign companies are critical to the construction and technology transfers surrounding the project, only $2.1 billion comes from foreign sources, $1.5 billion of which is from BOT mechanisms.34 The state attempted to encourage investment, both for GAP and for related projects, by offering sweetheart financing deals and exemptions from certain taxes (many of which are to promote the use of Turkish labor).35 However, it may seem surprising how much of the money comes from the state itself. This is most likely because the state has believed that it is upon its

28

Eugen Bucher, The position of the Civil Law of Turkey in the Western Civilisation 72 ATATRK AND MODERN TURKEY 217, 224 (1999). 29 Cevdet Denizer, Foreign Entry in Turkeys Banking Sector, 1980-97 8 (1998). 30 Emel Sahan, Case-Sudy: Southeastern Anatolia Project in Turkey GAP 3 (ETH Zurich: 2001). 31 Id. 32 Id. at 4. 33 Id. at 6. 34 Id. 35 Id. at 33.

shoulders alone to reconquer the Southeast, which it ought to do this its way, via its own methods.36 The more dim view is that they do not want too many prying eyes, particularly during the civil war years and even now as the Hasankeyf issues take center stage.37 The easiest way to avoid the public incrimination that results from the withdrawal of funding, as has happened for the Ilisu Dam, is for Turkey to pay all of its bills itself.

- SOCIOPOLITICAL COSTS AND BENEFITS Even in Ottoman times, the steppes of Anatolia were the true periphery beyond the central heartbeat at the Bosporus straits. The land and its rule was left to Kurdish aghas who would rule their people and pay homage to the Sultan in exchange for a royal imprimatur for local dominance.38 The power dynamic did not change much from then through independence in 1923; even as the capital moved to the central Anatolian town of Ankara, the Kurdish steppes east of it were treated as a strange and exotic land that ought to be left well enough alone as long as taxes were paid and none of the wrong people were killed in feuds or other accidents.39 After the 1980 coup, however, the reimagined Turkish state again turned its civilizing mission eastward. General Evren, and later zal, hoped to revitalize Kemalism not just by naming streets after the man and putting his image in every business, but also by blowing the dust off of some of his ideas.40 GAP was the boldest of these plans, imagined in much the same spirit as the Hoover Dam in the US as a nation-building feat that would bring industry to the

36 37

Turgut Ozal Period in Turkish Foreign Policy. Yigal Schleifer, A Dam Shame in Turkey Eurasianet (July 8, 2010), available at http://www.eurasianet.org/node/61493. 38 Glistan Grbey, Peaceful Settlement of Turkeys Kurdish Conflict Through Autonomy THE KURDISH CONFLICT IN TURKEY at 76. 39 Zrcher, TURKEY: A MODERN HISTORY at 227. 40 Turgut Ozal Period in Turkish Foreign Policy.

desert and civilized order to the landscape.41 Bringing order to the land, however, is never as easy as it appears to be in a boardroom in the capital. Dams don't just change the course of rivers; they also change the course of people. Perhaps the greatest symbol of this reimagining of the Southeast is Ilisu Dams faceoff against Hasankeyf and its protectors. Hasankeyf is an otherworldly beautiful town built on the banks of the Tigris River.42 If and when the Ilisu Dam is completed, Hasankeyf will be swallowed by the reservoir behind it.43 The city dates back to 300 BC and is one of the best preserved classical towns of the region.44 Built in strata along a cliff wall, reached by a bridge mentioned by Marco Polo in his travels, the town is so chock-full of architectural, historical, and archeological wonders that a tomb from the 1400s rising forty feet from the ground, covered in turquoise ceramic, does not even merit a shrug from the townspeople.45

41 42

Id. Diane Bolz, Endangered Site: The City of Hasankeyf, Turkey Smithsonian Magazine (March 2009). 43 Id. 44 Id. 45 Id. Picture below taken by author, Asher Kohn, on Nov. 23, 2007.

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The regions historical importance goes beyond simple beauty. Only a few hours drive away, near anlurfa, the archaeological dig of Gbeklitepe has been making headlines. Long thought to be merely a Medieval burial ground, careful digging revealed that these were not meter-long, elaborately carved, gravestones but megaliths dated back to 9,000 BC.46 Gbeklitepe may be the oldest human construction (older than many cave paintings) and science was oblivious to it until this decade.47 It is literally incomprehensible to imagine what other wonders lie in other hills. Archeological temptation aside, Hasankeyf compares closely with Mesa Verde

46

Elif Batuman, The Sanctuary, The New Yorker (Dec. 19, 2011), available at http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/12/19/111219fa_fact_batuman?currentPage=all. 47 Id.

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National Park in Colorado, except of course that Hasankeyf is continuously inhabited. A massive public awareness campaign and exhaustive litigation have halted construction in fits and starts.48 The more inexorable progress, however, and the more the town of Hasankeyf and its canyondwellers begin to feel hemmed in. GAP AS A TOOL OF COUNTER-INSURGENCY Cultural folkways and societal structures follow the fabric of the terrain throughout the world, and this is no different in Anatolia. The rolling hills and thin soil of the region make farming more difficult than it is farther down Mesopotamia, but the immutable curves make it difficult for population to coalesce.49 Diyarbakir is the largest population center in the region, but its count has become inflated with refugees and internally displaced persons since the 1980s.50 The insurgency within Turkey can described in many ways, none of which are both satisfactory and concise. Even after Evren inhibited demonstrations of leftist political thought in the country, he could not inhibit the thought itself. A group of disaffected college students rallied around one Abdullah calan to form the Partiyen Karkeren Kurdistani, the Workers' Party of Kurdistan or PKK.51 Although ostensibly a Marxist organization, the PKK took inspiration from political Islam, irredentist nationalism, and Liberation Theology to form a wholly revolutionary construct that called the mountains its home and openly scoffed at the flatlanders.52 The Turkish state, as one might imagine, reacted dramatically.

48

Helen Southcott, The price of progress? Ilsu Dam and Hasankeyf, Turkish Review (Nov. 24, 2011), available at http://www.turkishreview.org/tr/newsDetail_getNewsById.action?sectionId=362&newsId=223157. 49 S. Kapur et al., Land Degradation in Turkey at 3. 50 Susanne Gsten, In Turkish Restoration, a Violent History Unearthed, New York Times (Mar. 28, 2012), available at http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/29/world/middleeast/in-turkish-restoration-a-violent-historyunearthed.html?pagewanted=all. 51 Sevim Songn, History of PKK in Turkey, Hrriyet Daily News (Sep. 14, 2009), available at http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/default.aspx?pageid=438&n=history-for-the-pkk-in-turkey-2009-09-14. 52 Id.

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The state's military response, as important as it may be, is beyond the scope of this paper. What is more interesting is the use of GAP as economic counter-insurgency warfare. GAP emphasized agricultural and urban growth in the Southeast, which took people and resources away from the insurgency and towards the state.53 The greater viability in working the land or in the cities, the military reasoned, the more people see the soft side of the Turkish state and feel welcome into it and the less need they have for the PKK.54 Massive infrastructural improvements became indicative not just of the sprawl of GAP but also of the states interest in spreading further through the steppes. Blacktop highways finally networked from Ankara to the Iranian border, even if they were closed to civilian traffic for years at a time.55 Electrification and pure water finally came to the smaller hamlets of the region, but it came via military bases and the states preferred power brokers.56 There are many storylines for the rise of the Anatolian Tigers that popped up throughout Turkey in the 1990s. These cities gained international attention for growing at a blistering pace throughout the last two decades of the twentieth century, but they likely could not have done so without societal tremors in the Southeast. In the steppes, long-settled towns began turning against themselves. The Turkish Army began arming Village Guards to ostensibly

53

zden Zeynep Oktav, Water Dispute and Kurdish Separatism in Turkish-Syrian Relations 34 THE TURKISH YEARBOOK 91, 92 (2003). 54 Gareth Jenkins, Turkey Launches Economic Offensive against PKK Recruitment, The Jamestown Foundation (May 29, 2008), available at http://www.jamestown.org/programs/gta/single/?tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=4953&tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=16 7&no_cache=1; The same sort of techniques used by the Turkish state in the Southeast can be seen in action by the French in Algeria two decades previous and the Americans in Afghanistan two decades future. The ideas of developing infrastructure and urban life in order to develop a correct identity does not seem to matter on the identity of the imperial force. 55 Ekrem Gzeldere, Was There, is There, will There be a Kurdish Plan? TURKISH POLICY QUARTERLY 99, 101 (Jan. 2008). 56 Id.

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protect mountain towns from the PKK.57 The Guards were hardly kindly watchmen, however. Chosen from among families felt to be loyal to the state, they acted as militant local informants, proffering particulars of PKK action and working in concert with the Turkish armed forces.58 The Guards were also responsible for their share of the executions, drug smuggling, torture, and other human rights violations that took place during the decades of struggle.59 Turkey is only now beginning to come to terms with the ineffable violence of the past two decades.60 The Village Guard system created in the Southeast was not only an outright rejection of the PKKs attempts to control mountain villages, it was also an attempt to reify the aghas who increasingly relied on the state to maintain control.61 The conflict is often described as a civil war because eventually two separate governments the Marxists in the mountains and the landlords on the plains were attempting to claim suzerainty over the same people. As people fled the warfare in the mountains bombing raids and twilight attacks became de riguer they had no choice but to come to the cities of the southeast. Diyarbakirs population more than tripled officially and is probably the second or third largest city in Turkey if an accurate census could make its way through the refugees. 62 These cities, Gaziantep, Kayseri, Konya, Kahramanmara, Ordu and more, saw their population skyrocket, built airports and seaports, and raised new factories.63 This wouldnt have been possible without massive capital influx, but it also wouldnt have been possible without a floating class of unemployed laborers. GAP itself was criticized for not making enough use of
57

Emrullah Uslu, Village Guards on the Frontline of Turkeys War on Terrorism, The Jamestown Foundation (Oct. 1, 2008), available at http://www.jamestown.org/single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=5193. 58 Id. 59 Id. 60 Arsu, Turkey: Aging Generals Face Trial for Violent 1980 Military Coup. 61 Grbey, Peaceful Settlement of Turkeys Kurdish Conflict Through Autonomy in THE KURDISH CONFLICT IN TURKEY at 73. 62 Gsten, In Turkish Restoration, a Violent History Unearthed. 63 Islamic Calvinists: Change and Conservatism in Central Anatolia 13(European Stability Initiative: Sep. 19, 2005)

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local labor.64 GAPs secondary effects and the modernization of the steppes would not be possible, however, without the internally displaced persons brought to the cities by the conflict. Dams and roads meant greater ease of travel, and the insurgency meant greater desire to travel. The Village Guards and the violence of a Civil War got people out of the mountains and into cities. This de-pastoralization campaign was an inextricable cause and reason for GAPs success. Improved infrastructure, environmental control, and security were key to protecting Turkeys investment on the lowlands. In a war against an enemy preaching classless society and the abolition of gender roles, the status quo did not need to be deferred to, but reinforced. GAP was in many ways key to Ankaras attempts to have the plainsmen win out. The value of the land skyrocketed with advanced irrigation, and GAP-irrigated lands made Turkey one of the leading agricultural exporters in the world.65 This lined not only the landowners pockets but Ankaras as well.66 Agriculture, with its broad plains and terminable water supply, is much more taxable and fungible than relying on mountain shepherds to come to town to submit to muster.67 GAP was not only an important tool in suppressing the insurgency, it did so by bringing the steppes more fully into the Turkish fold. Outlawing the speaking of Kurdish and describing its speakers as Mountain Turks will only help so much.68 Making agriculture a viable way of life will do much more.

64

Maggie Ronayne, The Cultural and Environmental Impact of Large Dams in Southeastern Turkey 52 (National University of Ireland, Galway: Feb. 2005). 65 I.H. Olcay nver, Southeastern Anatolia Project (GAP) 13 WATER RESOURCES DEVELOPMENT 453, 455 (1997). 66 S. Sence Turk and Celil Turk, The Use of Land Readjustment as a Land Development Method in Turkey 4 (Istanbul Technical University: 2002). 67 James C. Scott, THE ART OF NOT BEING GOVERNED 144 (Yale University Press: 2009); One of the tropes of Memed, My Hawk is the spineless bureaucrat, hiding from the angry mountaineers and for all intents and purposes in the aghas employ. 68 Ceng Sagnic, Mountain Turks: State ideology and the Kurds in Turkey 3 INFORMATION, SOCIETY, AND JUSTICE 127, 130 (Jul. 2010).

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The nation-building aspects of GAP cannot be overlooked. To say that GAP is distinctly a project with economic aims is to lose the forest for the trees. The planners hoped to revitalize the economy of the steppes, bringing agricultural products to blossom and shipping them to the ports with good roads and rail.69

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- ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERNS When Turkey decided to launch itself from quietude and introversion unto the world stage in the 1980s, environmental concerns were mostly ignored. Turkey has incredible

69 70

nver, Southeastern Anatolia Project (GAP) 13 WATER RESOURCES DEVELOPMENT 474. Map of Turkeys Original Vegetation Cover from ekerciolu, et al., Turkeys globally important biodiversity in crisis 144 ELSEVIER 2753, 2754 (Dec. 2011), available at http://bioweb.biology.utah.edu/sekercioglu/PDFs/Sekerciolgu%202011%20BiolConserv_Turkey's%20globally%20i mportant%20biodiversity%20in.pdf.

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biodiversity, with Europe's third-longest coastline, coniferous forests in the west, the Taursus mountain range bisecting the country horizontally, a near-jungle labyrinth of mountains in the northeast, and the high Anatolian steppe spreading into the Southeast.71 Alexander ChristieMiller, Times of London correspondent for Turkey, calls the country the biodiversity superpower of Europe.72 He pessimistically notes that: The Environment and Planning Minister, Erdogan Bayraktar, is former head of TOKI, the countrys mass housing administration. The Minister of Environment and Water Works is Veysel Eroglu, former head of the State Water Works, and a man who once said that my job is building dams.73 Environmental preservation has given way to regulation at best, pure utilitarian use at worst. The Environment and Water Works Agency and other organs designed to protect the Turkish land from the predations of industrialism have been largely ineffective. One paper says the legislation is inadequate to implement modern conservation strategies.74 Its writers go on to assert that Enforcementoften remains inadequate or non-existent due to lack of expertise, limited coordination within and between agencies, and even collusion and corruption. Furthermore, several new government initiatives directly threaten protected areas and their biodiversity.75 Their hope for the future of conservation in the country lies not with government action but in inciting nationalism and a fervent defense of the homeland.76 Some endangered species have been protected, but rapid modernization and urbanization has run rampant over the homeland of mythological peris and djinns, let alone the extinct and made-mythological cheetahs and lions. The damage wrought by such massive construction has certainly been noted. Excavations
71 72

Id. Alexander Christie-Miller, Turkeys wildlife: ignored and in crisis, Turkey Etcetera (Jan. 3, 2012), available at http://turkeyetc.blogspot.com/2012/01/turkeys-wildlife-ignored-and-in-crisis.html. 73 Id. 74 ekerciolu, et al., Turkeys globally important biodiversity in crisis 144 ELSEVIER 2764. 75 Id. 76 Id. at 2765.

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for dams have [c]aused destruction in forested areas. Current flow and the quality of the water in streams are negatively affected as a result of filling the streambeds with soil.77 Scientific data points to elevated salinity, advanced erosion, and land exhaustion from the irrigation alone.78 Deforestation and wholesale environmental destruction have resulted from the geoforming required for dam construction.79 The massive scale of this was somehow understood and paraded while still being underestimated. The thin, exhausted soil as largely unprotected before the buzzsaws and bulldozers came into the region. The further damage could be enough to make grazing, if not farming, a wholly hopeless enterprise. Of course, a dam project is ultimately viewed by how it has affected water use and water transfers. The primary consequence of GAPs dams is that even though there is more water available to be used, the water has gone directly to landowners and city managers.80 If water is power, then GAP only increased the unequal distributions in power in the region. It is true that there are second order effects; the shepherds-cum-factory owners mentioned before are glaring examples. But these statistical outliers of capitalism are not enough to avoid the fact that the biggest winners in the outcome were those the government selected to be winners. GAP AND HYDROLOGY The dam network assembled under the aegis of GAP has had the effect of turning a free-flowing fact of everyday life into a carefully stored commodity. This has the effect of privileging certain populations or livelihoods over others by directing the water only to the communities it ought

77 78

Schleifer, A Dam Shame in Turkey. S. Kapur et al., Land Degradation in Turkey 9 (2002). 79 Id. at 11. 80 Turk and Turk, The Use of Land Readjustment as a Land Development Method in Turkey at 4.

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to be guided to.81 Landowners can and have cut off water to uncooperative or undesirable tenants with the arbitrariness that only state backing can provide.82 Much like in the American West, the steppes of Southeastern Turkey were consolidated top-down.83 What barbed wire started, dams finished. Water disbursement relies on state authority and class relations to sustain itself and to replace traditional conceptions of water use.84 Those traditional conceptions quite simply do not give due deference to a modern nation-state. Harris writes that in a survey of the Southeast, the question who should own the water? 66% of respondents said Allah, while 27.5% said the state, 3.8% said the user, and 2.5% said society.85 This theo-anarchic conception of natural resources runs counter to the cash crops, metered ditches, and tax income required for running a state. Its no wonder Turkey is trying to push such notions into the dustbin of history. The water has to be taken and adopted by the state for the best, most economically efficient, use. That included replacing local sorghum or millet with labor- and water-intensive plants like cotton, turning large swathes of the steppe into plantations.86 At least when the crops were shipped to all ports west, the profits more or less stayed within the Southeast. The same could not be said of the 19 hydroelectric power plants in the region. The massive urban growth in the region discussed above was not done on the back of these dams and the water rushing through them, but rather the backs of miners in the north of the country. Coal shipped down from Zonguldak fired the factories, the kilns, and the evolution of the Anatolian Tigers.87 Hydroelectric power migrated west, to Ankara, Izmir, and Istanbul. The

81

Leila M. Harris, Water and Conflict Geographies of the Southeastern Anatolia Project 15 SOCIETY AND NATURAL RESOURCES 743, 748 (2002). 82 Turk and Turk, The Use of Land Readjustment as a Land Development Method in Turkey at 6. 83 Id. at 755. 84 Id. 85 Id. at 754. 86 Id. at 755. 87 Country Analysis Briefs: Turkey 8 (Energy Information Administration: 2011).

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infrastructure put into place along with the dams and plants promised this transfer.88 Coal plants were maxed out in the industrial heartland of the country, and more and more power was needed as the standard of living and demand increased throughout.89 Many commentators and analysts decry this as another unjust toll on the Southeast.90 Its water, dammed up and flooding the land, taken by the state for its own reasons, and the local communities only see a sliver of GAPs declared beneficence.91 This view is no doubt a bit dimmer than reality, that electricity does not simply come out of the wall and that a democratic state is required to power its citizens. The problem, or at least the cause for teeth-gnashing, is less the dams and more the modernization they represent. To rail against it may be a Sisyphean task.

92

At least the electricity kept within Turkey can be discussed and ultimately resolved in a political process. The other countries in the Tigris-Euphrates basin are not as fortunate. Iraq could lose up to 80% of the projected flow due to GAP, Syria 40%.93 Turkey has been able to get away with this since the downstream states are Iraq and Syria, two black-sheep states in the world economic system. Iraq was under Saddam Hussein and Hussein-related sanctions for much

88 89

nver, Southeastern Anatolia Project (GAP) 13 WATER RESOURCES DEVELOPMENT 464. Ronayne, The Cultural and Environmental Impact of Large Dams in Southeastern Turkey 46. 90 See generally, Ronayne, The Cultural and Environmental Impact of Large Dams in Southeastern Turkey. 91 Id. at 20. 92 Installed Capacity of Electric Power in Turkey in Ahmet Koyun, Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy: Turkey National study 11 (UNEP: 2007). 93 Harris, Water and Conflict Geographies of the Southeastern Anatolia Project 746.

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of GAPs existence. Now that those sanctions are over and Iraq is a welcome player in the region, leaders of both countries are optimistic that an oil-for-water agreement can be made.94 Syria is another story. Tensions throughout the 1980s and 1990s led to Syria supporting the PKK as revenge against the perceived theft of their water.95 It was not until the Turkish military mobilized on the border that Syria kicked calan out of their country and quit water claims.96 With the current chaos throughout the country at the time of writing,97 it is anybodys guess where Syrian-Turkish trade will go. Before the violence, the Turkish government went out of its way to welcome al-Assad and build ties between the countries.98Attacks on Syrian refugees in Turkish territory,99 however, have a way of burning diplomatic bridges.

- CONCLUDING REMARKS
It is important to remember that Turkey is a young country, founded in 1923 and not yet celebrating its 90th birthday. It is too easy to remain at an Ameri-centric remove and forget that no state is born at full bloom, that every government screeches and grunts towards progress that is hardly inexorable. Each government wants to extend its power from the four corners of its boundaries and not be bothered by outside actors while it does so. GAP has tremendous environmental impacts, but those impacts are ultimately subaltern to the projects ultimate purpose. As can be seen by the dams economic, social, and environmental effects, the goal of the project is to build a full and cohesive state in all facets. GAP allows for more efficient and transparent agriculture, which means greater and easier to
94 95

Hasan Turunc, Turkey and Iraq 4 (London School of Economics: 2007). Oktav, Water Dispute and Kurdish Separatism in Turkish-Syrian Relations 34 THE TURKISH YEARBOOK 103. 96 Id. at 107. 97 See generally, Syria protests Live Blog, available at, http://blogs.aljazeera.net/liveblog/Syria-protests. 98 Mustafa Kibarolu, Turkish-Syrian rapproachement key to peace in the Middle East, Bitter Lemons (Jan. 7, 2010), available at http://www.bitterlemons-international.org/inside.php?id=1223. 99 Justin Vela, No Refuge, Foreign Policy (Mar. 7, 2012), available at http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/03/07/no_refuge.

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process taxes for the government. GAP also reifies state power over its citizens and works handin-glove with military occupation in order to claim primacy over Kurdish insurgents in the Southeast. The dams also have the effect of terraforming the steppes, taming rivers and spoiling population patterns regardless of locals or foreigners desires. GAP was conceived as a grandiose project that would change the face of the country, and it has succeeded in large part as Turkeys equivalent of the Hoover or Three Gorges Dams. When Turkey became a republic, it lost its empire. One hears much about NeoOttomanism in the press at this juncture of time, and it is easy to lose track of the phrases hollowness.100 A country asserting itself on the worlds stage is sometimes still just a country.

100

A cursory internet search of Neo-Ottomanism can bring up any number of articles expressing chest-thumping pride and/or breathless fear. A personal favorite of mine is the map of the Turkish-Islamic Union shown above that would likely make Pamela Geller or Claire Berlinski go comatose with fright, available at http://www.biyokulule.com/sawiro/sawirada_waaweyn/Neo-Ottomanism1.jpg.

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Turkeys actions in its Southeast closely mirror those of the United States in its West and other empires the world over. Land was seen as empty and desirous of use, ignored by its ungrateful and insouciant natives. In the case at issue, there was no Manifest Destiny but rather a very purposeful attempt at Turkification, not just of the Kurds but of the land under them. Modernization may have required the sort of empire-colony relationship that grew out of the relationship between the Turkish center and its Anatolian periphery. GAP could just be an effect, by no means cosmetic, of this colonizing relationship. But one cannot begrudge a state for being desirous of modernization; there is much seemingly sympathetic literature that reads as though it wants Turkey and the whole region frozen in 18th Century repose. GAP as a tool of modernization, as a way to unify the nation, as been wholly successful. Its environmental and sociopolitical consequences were sadly inevitable.

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