Natural Resources Law - Heisel

To Build a Nation with Concrete The Southeastern Anatolia Project and Turkey’s Modernization Efforts

Asher Kohn April 20, 2012

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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.

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

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- 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 Turkey’s insular image. Turgut Özal 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 country’s 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,

1 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 Güneydoğu 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).

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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

6 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-turkish-

foreign-policy-ozalism.html. 7 Id.

8 Erik Jan Zürcher, 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 Gülistan Gürbey, Eds., LIT Verlag Münster: 2000); Yaşar Kemal’s

epic MEMED, MY HAWK [Turkish: INCE MEMED] talks about rural violence in Turkey, though it does not explicitly

mention the political or ethnic dimensions.

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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 Özal to be their economic advisor as they took power and

formed a new Constitution.12

Özal 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

Private-

public partnerships bloomed and foreign direct investment skyrocketed as the military stabilized

the cities while Özal stabilized the economy. And although the military tribunals and counter-

revolutionary operations left an indelible scar from which Turkey is only now recovering,15

Özal'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. Özal

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, Turkey’s 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

d’états will go down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theory quite quickly. The CIA Ankara Station Chief’s 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).

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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

Turgut Ozal Period in Turkish Foreign Policy. 17

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

Sabancı 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, Akçakaya, 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, Çirçir Fabrikasi.” available at http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/Haci-Omer-Sabanci-

Holdings-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).

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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

Özal 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

Özal 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 Özal imagined. Özal must have seen many such projects in his time at the World

Bank. Özal 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, Özal had seen countries enter a form of debtor’s 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

Turkey’s civil code is built upon French and Swiss traditions, but the

23

Sven B. Kjellström, 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 Eylül sermayenin darbesiydi [September 12 was capital’s coup], Radikal (Sep. 12, 2008),

available at http://taraf.com.tr/haber/12-eylul-sermayenin-darbesiydi.htm.

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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 Özal desired to do business.29

With a law code based on European norms and a public

figure like Özal 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

It’s 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 ATATÜRK AND MODERN

TURKEY 217, 224 (1999). 29

Cevdet Denizer, Foreign Entry in Turkey’s 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.

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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 Özal, 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

Turgut Ozal Period in Turkish Foreign Policy. 37

Yigal Schleifer, A Dam Shame in Turkey Eurasianet (July 8, 2010), available at

http://www.eurasianet.org/node/61493. 38

Gülistan Gürbey, “Peaceful Settlement of Turkey’s Kurdish Conflict Through Autonomy” THE KURDISH

CONFLICT IN TURKEY at 76. 39

Zürcher, TURKEY: A MODERN HISTORY at 227. 40

Turgut Ozal Period in Turkish Foreign Policy.

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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 Dam’s 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 1400’s rising forty feet from the ground, covered in

turquoise ceramic, does not even merit a shrug from the townspeople.45

41

Id. 42

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 region’s historical importance goes beyond simple beauty. Only a few hours’ drive

away, near Şanlıurfa, the archaeological dig of Göbeklitepe 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

Göbeklitepe

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 canyon-

dwellers 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 Öcalan 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? Ilısu 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 Güsten, 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-history-

unearthed.html?pagewanted=all. 51

Sevim Songün, History of PKK in Turkey, Hürriyet 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 state’s 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 state’s 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

Özden 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 Güzeldere, “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 PKK’s 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. Diyarbakir’s 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, Kahramanmaraş, Ordu and more, saw their population

skyrocket, built airports and seaports, and raised new factories.63

This wouldn’t have been

possible without massive capital influx, but it also wouldn’t 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 Turkey’s 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

Gürbey, “Peaceful Settlement of Turkey’s Kurdish Conflict Through Autonomy” in THE KURDISH CONFLICT IN

TURKEY at 73. 62

Güsten, In Turkish Restoration, a Violent History Unearthed. 63

Islamic Calvinists: Change and Conservatism in Central Anatolia 13(European Stability Initiative: Sep. 19, 2005)

15

local labor.64

GAP’s 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 GAP’s success.

Improved infrastructure, environmental control, and security were key to protecting

Turkey’s 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 Ankara’s 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 Ankara’s 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 Ünver, “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 agha’s employ. 68

Ceng Sagnic, “Mountain Turks: State ideology and the Kurds in Turkey” 3 INFORMATION, SOCIETY, AND JUSTICE

127, 130 (Jul. 2010).

16

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

70

- 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

Ünver, “Southeastern Anatolia Project (GAP)” 13 WATER RESOURCES DEVELOPMENT 474. 70

“Map of Turkey’s ‘Original’ Vegetation Cover” from Şekercioğlu, et al., “Turkey’s 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.

17

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 Christie-

Miller, 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 country’s 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

“Enforcement…often 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

Id. 72

Alexander Christie-Miller, Turkey’s 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

Şekercioğlu, et al., “Turkey’s globally important biodiversity in crisis” 144 ELSEVIER 2764. 75

Id. 76

Id. at 2765.

18

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 GAP’s 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

Schleifer, A Dam Shame in Turkey. 78

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.

19

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. It’s 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).

20

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 GAP’s

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

Ünver, “Southeastern Anatolia Project (GAP)” 13 WATER RESOURCES DEVELOPMENT 464. 89

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.

21

of GAP’s 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 Öcalan out of their country and quit water claims.96

With the current chaos throughout the country at the time of writing,97

it is anybody’s 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.98

Attacks 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 project’s 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

Hasan Turunc, Turkey and Iraq 4 (London School of Economics: 2007). 95

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 Kibaroğlu, 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.

22

process taxes for the government. GAP also reifies state power over its citizens and works hand-

in-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

Turkey’s equivalent of the Hoover or Three Gorges Dams.

When Turkey became a republic, it lost its empire. One hears much about “Neo-

Ottomanism” in the press at this juncture of time, and it is easy to lose track of the phrase’s

hollowness.100

A country asserting itself on the world’s 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.

23

Turkey’s 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.