Evolution of Transboundary Politics in The Euphrat

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Evolution of Transboundary Politics in the Euphrates-

Tigris River System: New Perspectives and Political
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Article in Global Governance · April 2013

DOI: 10.1163/19426720-01902008
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Global Governance 19 (2013), 279–305
Evolution of Transboundary Politics

in the Euphrates-Tigris River System:
New Perspectives and Political Challenges
Aysegul Kibaroglu and Waltina Scheumann
Transboundary water politics in the Euphrates-Tigris river system have

evolved with competitive power dynamics and cooperative institutional
development. We analyze the evolution of transboundary water relations
over four consecutive periods. The first period coincided with nation build-
ing in the region, when the riparian states focused on their domestic need
for socioeconomic development rather than the formulation of external
water policies. The second period saw the advent of competitive trans-
boundary water politics shaped by the initiation of uncoordinated, large-
scale water development projects. The third period was the most complex,
given the link between transboundary water issues and nonriparian secu-
rity issues. In the fourth period, the role of water bureaucracies in the re-
orientation of water policies from hostile to cooperative became
significant. Even in the midst of the very recent political crisis between
Turkey and Syria, partial institutionalization of water cooperation and
growing networks of water dialogue at both the governmental and non-
governmental levels should continue to serve as open channels for easing
the tensions. KEYWORDS: transboundary water politics, Euphrates-Tigris
rivers, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, conflict, cooperation, water bureaucracies.
THE MAIN RIPARIAN STATES OF THE EUPHRATES-TIGRIS RIVER SYSTEM ARE

Turkey, Syria, and Iraq.1 Water disputes among them originated with moves
in the 1960s by each of them toward large-scale water development projects.
The initial aim of the projects was flow regulation designed to end the alter-
ation of flooding and droughts. But ambitions in each country quickly grew
to include hydropower generation and sharp increases in the use of river
water for drinking and irrigation. Unilateral and uncoordinated water devel-
opment projects by each party began to stress the river system’s capacity. As
the demand for water exceeded supply, water authorities in each country
finally began reaching out to their counterparts in the others and they devel-
oped rather ad hoc processes of discussion and negotiation.
Unfortunately, above the level of the water bureaucrats, political rival-
ries stemming from conflicting national positions within the Cold War
framework prevented any fruitful cooperation from taking root. Turkey’s
NATO membership and Syria and Iraq’s ties to the Soviet Union did more
279
280 Evolution of Transboundary Politics
than inhibit cooperation; they aggravated existing disputes over water and
moved them progressively up the agenda of contentious issues until they
were near the top for Turkey with each of the others. Ironically, despite sim-
ilarly dependent relations with the Soviet Union, Iraq and Syria also were
at loggerheads over water, as well as other issues implicated in their bitter
regional rivalry, and there were moments when water use in the Euphrates
river basin propelled the two regimes to the cusp of war. Though frequently
marked by harsh rhetoric, Turkish-Iraqi relations were manageable by com-
parison in part because of complementary economies that induced a signifi-
cant volume of bilateral trade. With the turning of the millennium, bilateral
political relations between Turkey and Syria became conducive to trans-
boundary water dialogue. In this context, contacts were established at gov-
ernmental and nongovernmental levels, with the focus particularly on water
and regional (river basin) development. And a series of protocols were
signed to enable further cooperation.
Regime change in Iraq created both uncertainties and opportunities. Iraq
joined in the trilateral ministerial dialogue on water issues and even signed
separate protocols with Turkey and Syria that broadly addressed trans-
boundary water use and management. However, the Iraqi parliament con-
stantly criticized Turkey’s use of water upstream and became vocal over
claimed violation of Iraq’s water rights. The recent domestic political unrest
in Syria has led to the severing of bilateral political relations with Turkey
and the blocking of any further transboundary water cooperation.
Against the background of often volatile relations among the three ripar-
ians, we consider the evolution of transboundary water politics in the
Euphrates-Tigris river system, its competitive power dynamics, and its coop-
erative institutional development. We begin by describing the physical char-
acteristics of the Euphrates-Tigris river system as the medium of complex
interdependencies among the riparian states. We then analyze the evolution
of transboundary water politics over four consecutive periods. The first
period coincided with nation-building in the region, when the riparian states
focused on their domestic need for socioeconomic development rather than
the formulation of external water policies. The historical treaties signed at
that time defined state borders and general bilateral political relations, and
also included some clauses concerning transboundary water uses. The sec-
ond period, however, saw the advent of competitive transboundary water
politics shaped by the initiation of uncoordinated, large-scale water devel-
opment projects. As the national water development ventures progressed,
mismatches between water supply and demand occurred throughout the river
basin. The ad hoc technical negotiations were unable to prepare the ground
for a comprehensive treaty on equitable and effective transboundary water
management. The third period was the most complex, given the link
between transboundary water issues and nonriparian security issues. Mutual
Aysegul Kibaroglu and Waltina Scheumann 281
distrust precluded any fruitful outcome. However, this was also the phase
when attempts were made to establish a joint mechanism for settling trans-
boundary water disputes. We analyze these mechanisms, which ultimately
proved incapable of resolving water and political crises in the region. In the
fourth period, the role of water bureaucracies in the reorientation of water
policies from hostile to cooperative became significant.
In the decades since the disputes over water first began, the state has
been the major player in the formulation and implementation of transbound-
ary water policies. The discourse and practices of the state bureaucracies—
the water technocrats in the various ministries—and foreign office diplomats
of the riparian states have evolved during the prolonged water dispute and
this, in turn, has played a significant role in changing the nature of trans-
boundary water relations. In the last section of this article, we therefore con-
sider water relations among the riparians, paying particular attention to the
role of water bureaucracies in the reorientation of water policies from hos-
tile to cooperative in the early 2000s. We scrutinize the policy-learning
processes of bureaucracies, paying particular attention to the shift from secu-
ritized negotiations to a functional approach.
We conclude that, even in the midst of the recent political crisis between
Turkey and Syria, partial institutionalization of water cooperation and grow-
ing networks of water dialogue at both the governmental and nongovern-
mental levels have continued to serve as open channels for easing the
tensions. After all, severe water shortages due to mismanagement, misuse,
and prolonged drought conditions can be addressed satisfactorily only at the
river basin level, with all the riparians concerned in attendance. Come what
may, the dialogue on water should be kept open. The situation strongly sug-
gests the need for joint efforts to assess and coordinate planning and man-
agement in order to harmonize basinwide development, in which, in addition
to water sector demands (energy, agriculture), in-stream flows, and ecosys-
tem protection should be taken into account.
Rivers of Common Geography and History

The two greatest rivers of the Eurasian landscape, the Euphrates and the
Tigris, originate in one climatic and topographic zone and end in a quite dif-
ferent one. The basin is characterized by high mountains to the north and west
and extensive lowlands in the south and east.2 The catchment areas of both
rivers have a subtropical Mediterranean climate with wet winters and dry sum-
mers. The rivers are in spate in spring when the snow melts and is augmented
by seasonal rainfall, which is at its heaviest between March and May. The
summer season is hot and dry, resulting in extensive evaporation and low
humidity during the day. Evaporation increases water salinization and water
loss in major reservoirs in the three riparian countries.3 Because the water is
not present where (on farmland) or when (in summer) it is most needed, the
riparians have launched large-scale irrigation projects, which have become the
main bone of contention in transboundary water politics since the late 1960s.
The Euphrates and its tributaries drain an enormous basin of
444,000 km2, of which 33.0 percent lies in Turkey, 19.0 percent in Syria,
and 46.0 percent in Iraq while the Tigris and its tributaries drain an area of
387,600 km2, of which 15.0 percent lies in Turkey, 0.3 percent in Syria, 75.0
percent in Iraq, and 9.5 percent in Iran. Both rivers rise in Turkey, scarcely
30 km apart, flow through Syria and Iraq, and join to form the Shatt-al-Arab
waterway north of Basra in Iraq before discharging into the Persian Gulf.
The Euphrates is a long river (3,000 km), around 41 percent lying in Turkey,
23 percent in Syria, and 36 percent in Iraq. Iraq accounts for most (77 per-
cent) of the Tigris (1,850 km), followed by Turkey (22 percent) and Syria,
which has 44 km of the main river channel, forming its border with Turkey
(about 36 km) and Iraq (about 8 km).4
The mean annual flow of the Euphrates is 32 km3, of which about 90
percent originates in Turkey and the remaining 10 percent in Syria.5 As for
the Tigris, the average total discharge is 52 km3 per year, of which approxi-
mately 40 percent comes from Turkey, with Iraq and Iran contributing 51
percent and 9 percent, respectively.6
Iraq derives the majority of its freshwater from the two rivers.7
Although the Euphrates basin is one of seven in Syria, it is strategically the
most important because of its existing and potential uses for agricultural and
hydropower purposes.8 The Tigris-Euphrates basin is one of twenty-five
basins in Turkey, but accounts for nearly a third of the country’s surface
water resources and a fifth of its irrigable land. The variation of the flow of
these twin rivers from one season and one year to another is extremely high,
and severe drought and destructive flooding have been common phenomena
for thousands of years. The physical characteristics of the rivers necessitate
the coordinated management and use of water resources within and among
the states they pass through. They cause interdependencies among the ripar-
ian states, which call for a cooperative attitude to ensure more efficient use
of the water in the region and the avoidance of serious conflicts.
We observe friendly relations among the riparians from the early 1920s
until the late 1950s (the first period), when each country’s priority was the
establishment of state bureaucracies and all had similar concerns and the
same need for socioeconomic development. Throughout that period, plan-
ning was done largely on a country-by-country basis. None of the countries
engaged in major development projects, which would have resulted in uti-
lization of water by each to the detriment of the others.9 The Euphrates and
Tigris linked the communities in the river basin as they had done for thou-
sands of years, and the newly established riparian states had yet to clash
over the use of the water.
At transboundary level, harmonious water relations reigned in the basin

under a series of bilateral political treaties. The first legal arrangement
among the riparians was an agreement signed by France and Turkey in
Ankara on 20 October 1921 with a view toward promoting peace between
the two countries. Under Article XII of that treaty concerning the “Distribu-
tion and Removal of Waters” it was agreed that “the city of Aleppo may also
organize, at its own expense, a water-supply from the Euphrates in Turkish
territory in order to meet the requirements of the district.” Article 109 of the
1923 Lausanne Peace Treaty covers another legal aspect of the issue, stating
that, if the fixing of a new frontier results in the river system of one state
being dependent on facilities that were established before the war and are
now located within the borders of another state, the parties concerned must
conclude an agreement that is capable of safeguarding their respective inter-
ests and sovereign rights and that, in the absence of an agreement, the dis-
pute will be settled by arbitration.10
One of the most important legal agreements between Iraq and Turkey
concerning water resources is the Protocol annexed to their 1946 Treaty of
Friendship and Good Neighbourly Relations. This protocol establishes a
framework that sets out the two parties’ respective rights and obligations in the
Euphrates and Tigris river system. Above all, it emphasizes the urgency of
installing flood control works on the rivers and underlines the positive impact
that storage facilities sited on Turkish soil would have for both. The parties
agreed that, if the most suitable sites were on Turkish territory, the entire cost
would be met by Iraq. Permanent observation stations would be built, oper-
ated, and maintained by Turkey, with Turkey and Iraq sharing the costs
equally. Turkey agreed to inform Iraq of its construction plans and, if it deter-
mined that it needed water for irrigation and hydropower purposes, separate
negotiations would be held.11 In recognizing rights and obligations for both
the upstream and downstream states, it seems peculiarly enlightened and not
only for its time since contemporary bilateral water treaties such as the 1987
Protocol between Turkey and Syria and the 1990 Protocol between Syria and
Iraq (described in detail in the following related section) seem less balanced in
their recognition of upper and lower riparian rights and obligations.
During this initial period, the riparian countries were mainly concerned
with water supply for urban and rural populations. Bureaucracies with tech-
nical expertise were busy with the initial organizational setup and the plan-
ning of irrigation systems and dam construction. Transboundary waters were
the subject of domestic planning and development exercises and had little to
do with the foreign policy agenda. Those involved in transboundary water
relations at that time were therefore mainly medium-level technocrats—
advisers and professionals who prepared the technical ground for the draft-
ing of the water-related clauses of the treaties, in whose conclusion the
riparian diplomats acted as brokers.
Rivers of Competition
In the second period, water relations became competitive due to uncoordi-
nated and unilateral projects carried out in the region. As the riparian states
further consolidated their regimes between 1960 and 1980, they paid more
attention to socioeconomic development based on water and land resources.
Turkey had long been dependent on oil imports. Having been hard hit by the
oil crises of the 1970s, the government embarked on a program of indige-
nous resource development that particularly emphasized hydropower and
lignite schemes with the aim of minimizing the national economy’s depend-
ency on imported oil.12
The Syrian economy has traditionally been dominated by agriculture.
Exploration for oil did not begin until the early 1980s. Even though oil made
a significant contribution to export earnings in the following decades as
world oil prices fluctuated, Syria focused on agricultural development with
the aim of achieving food self-sufficiency.13 These considerations were rein-
forced by political goals which, under the ruling Ba’ath Party, placed the
emphasis on the development of rural areas and the organization of peasants
as a political power base.14 Since 1958, Iraq changed from being mainly an
agricultural country exporting wheat, rice, and other crops to an oil-produc-
ing, semi-industrial nation forced to import most of its own food. Yet after
the Iraqi government nationalized the oil companies in 1972 and began to
receive more income from oil, the focus also turned to agricultural produc-
tion.15 This led to an expansion of irrigated areas, with the aim of achieving
food security for the Iraqi people.16
The central water agencies of all the riparian countries designated the
rivers for large-scale development projects. In Turkey, the major objective
was to irrigate the fertile lands in southeastern Anatolia, which make up one-
fifth of the country’s irrigable land, using the huge water potential of the
Tigris and Euphrates river basin, which accounts for 28.5 percent of the sur-
face water supply.17 In this context, Turkey implemented the Lower
Euphrates Project, initially a series of dams designed to increase hydropower
generation and expand irrigated agriculture. Subsequently, in the late 1970s,
the Lower Euphrates Project evolved into a larger, multisectoral develop-
ment project, taking in the Tigris waters as well and known as the South-
eastern Anatolia Project (GAP, its Turkish acronym), which included
twenty-one large dams, nineteen hydropower plants, and irrigation schemes
extending to 1.7 million ha of land.
The Euphrates river basin provides 65 percent of surface water supply
in Syria and accounts for 27 percent of total land resources. Syria launched
the Euphrates Valley Project under the Ba’ath Party. The government set a
number of objectives to be met by the project: irrigation of an area as large as
640,000 ha; construction of the large, multipurpose Tabqa or Al-Thawra Dam
to generate the electricity needed for urban use and industrial development;
and regulation of the flow of the Euphrates to prevent seasonal flooding.18
The main channels and tributaries of the Euphrates and the Tigris rivers
account for almost the entire freshwater supply in Iraq, which pioneered and
built its first dams in the 1950s: the Euphrates Dam in 1955–1956 to divert
water to Lake Al-Habbaniya; and the Samarra Dam on the Tigris, completed
in 1954, to protect against previously catastrophic floods. The Ba’ath Party,
which came to power under Saddam Hussein’s presidency in 1968, adopted
the slogan “food security for the Iraqi people,” which was to be accomplished
through the development of irrigation. To that end, the Revolutionary Plan
was developed. The Higher Agriculture Council attached to the presidency,
the Soil and Land Reclamation Organisation attached to the Ministry of Irri-
gation, and many other new departments were established to carry out stud-
ies, to create designs, and to construct and maintain water projects.19
Owing to the competitive and uncoordinated nature of these water
development projects, disagreements over transboundary water uses sur-
faced in the late 1960s. During this period, transboundary water issues were
regarded by each country’s political leadership as falling within the middle
range of economic and technical objectives, which could be handled by offi-
cial technical delegations. Hence, water negotiations were held by tech-
nocrats from the riparians’ central water agencies, accompanied by
diplomats who advised and monitored the negotiations, particularly when
international legal and political aspects were under discussion. The main
theme of these technical negotiations was the impact of the construction of
the Keban Dam in Turkey and the Tabqa Dam in Syria on Iraq’s historical
water use patterns. While Turkey suggested the establishment of a Joint
Technical Committee (JTC) to determine the water and irrigation needs of
the riparians, Iraq insisted on a guarantee of specific flows and a water-shar-
ing agreement. While Turkey released certain flows during the construction
and impounding of the Keban Dam, no final allocation agreement was
reached even after numerous technical meetings.20
Those meetings did not achieve the expressed aim of coordinating the
water development and use patterns of the three riparians. Consequently, a
political crisis occurred in the region in 1975. Turkey began impounding the
Keban reservoir at the same time that Syria was completing the construction
of the Tabqa Dam—during a period of severe drought. The impounding of
the two reservoirs triggered a crisis in the spring. Iraq accused Syria of
reducing the river’s flow to intolerable levels while Syria blamed Turkey.
The Iraqi government was not satisfied with the Syrian response, and the
mounting frustration resulted in mutual threats that brought the parties to the
brink of armed hostility. A war over water was averted when, thanks to
Saudi Arabia’s mediation, Syria released additional quantities of water to
Iraq.21 The main cause of this crisis was the mounting political rivalry and
tension between the two Ba’athist regimes. In other words, it was not a
water-sharing crisis per se, but rather the beginning of the use of water as a
political lever in nonriparian issues.
Rivers of Discord
In the third period, from the 1980s until the late 1990s, political tensions
among the parties insinuated themselves into every corner of the relationships
and, thus, inevitably water issues moved into the realm of high politics. Bilat-
eral relations between Turkey and Syria had long been strained. Two princi-
pal sources of friction were Syria’s extensive logistical support for the
Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a separatist terrorist organization, and Syr-
ian irredentist claims to the province of Hatay in Turkey.22 Despite official
denials in Damascus, Syria’s support for subversive activities against Turkey
had been widely known and documented since the early 1980s.23
Even though the regional political environment was not conducive to
water cooperation in the early 1980s, the growing exploitation of the
Euphrates through the construction of the Ataturk Dam in Turkey led to
fresh calls for cooperation. Because the issues triggered by water develop-
ment schemes along the Tigris and Euphrates are so complex and far-reach-
ing, the three riparians had to find ways to structure their discussions. To this
end, Iraq took the initiative in the formation of a permanent joint technical
body. The first meeting of the Joint Economic Commission between Turkey
and Iraq in 1980 led to the establishment in 1983 of the JTC, whose mem-
bers included participants from all three riparians assigned to lay down
methods and procedures that would lead to the definition of a reasonable and
adequate quantity of water for each country from both rivers.24 However, the
JTC was not able to agree on any substantial resolution even after sixteen
meetings. Negotiations were suspended in 1993.25 A careful examination of
the records of the negotiations among the riparian states, and their failure,
shows that nonwater issues (or, more precisely, the overall pattern of rela-
tions among the three countries) played a decisive part in the growth of ten-
sion and disputes. The use of transboundary rivers was only one factor in
their complex web of relations and interactions.26
The major issues that led to the deadlock in the JTC were related to both
the subject and the object of the negotiations: were the Euphrates and the
Tigris to be considered a single system, or could the discussions be confined
to the Euphrates?27 The wording of the JTC’s ultimate objective—establishing
a common terminology—was also problematic: should there be a proposal for
the “sharing” of the “international rivers,” or should there be a trilateral
regime for determining the “utilization of transboundary watercourses”? Iraq
and Syria considered the Euphrates to be an international river and insisted on
an immediate sharing agreement under which its waters would be shared on
the basis of the needs declared by each country. On the other hand, Turkey
regarded the Euphrates and Tigris as forming a single transboundary river
basin where the waters should be allocated according to objective needs.28
International customary law on transboundary watercourses has been
the point of reference throughout the negotiation process at the JTC meet-
ings. The principles of equitable and reasonable utilization, of the optimum

use of water resources between states, and of the avoidance of transbound-
ary harm to both nature and human usage have been evoked by diplomats
representing the three riparians.29
By their nature, principles of customary law do not constitute enforceable
rules, nor are they subject to what concepts such as “equity” might mean in
concrete situations. In this way, while interpreting the principles of interna-
tional law concerning equitable utilization, the riparians adopted opposing and
rigid positions, with Turkey insisting on its water needs being met, and Syria
and Iraq demanding their unilateral shares and respect for their water rights.
Turkey’s needs-based approach was expressed in the Three-Stage Plan,
put forward by the technocrats of its central water agency.30 According to
this, inventory studies of water and land resources throughout the region
comprising the territories of the various states would be undertaken and
jointly evaluated. On the basis of these studies, the means and measures
needed to attain the most reasonable, optimum utilization of resources would
be defined. Although founded on principles of scientific rationality, the
likely result of the acceptance of Turkey’s proposal as a basis for tripartite
negotiations would be to reveal the lesser viability of Syria’s and Iraq’s irri-
gation expansion plans which would, of course, be unacceptable to them.31
On the other hand, Syria and Iraq insisted on an immediate agreement under
which the waters of the Euphrates would be shared on the basis of the water
rights claimed by each country. Both countries asserted that, as the annual
average flow of the Euphrates River was around 1,000 m3/sec, Turkey
should keep only one-third of the flow for itself and allow the remaining
two-thirds to be shared by Syria and Iraq.32
The JTC meetings, at which claims and counterclaims concerning the
use of the rivers and the nature of customary international water law were
voiced, did not make an effective contribution to the settlement of the
regional water dispute. The JTC did not provide a platform for delineating
the coriparians’ priorities and needs as a basis for addressing regional water
problems. In this respect, water use patterns and the riparians’ related legis-
lation and institutional structures never had a chance of being discussed at
the JTC meetings. National management and allocation policies were like
“black boxes,” and water management practices within the various countries
simply could not be debated during those negotiations.
Neither did the treaties signed in the late 1980s prove to be useful means
of managing the transboundary river system equitably. In 1987 and 1990 two
bilateral accords—acknowledged by all the riparian states as being interim
agreements—were signed following a number of high-level meetings of top
officials in the region. In 1987, the Turkish-Syrian Protocol on Economic Co-
operation was the first formal bilateral agreement reached on regional waters,
its conclusion made possible by simultaneous negotiations on security matters
and water.33 Turkish prime minister Turgut Ozal, the decisive political actor at
the time, promised a water flow of up to 500 km3 per second, or about 16 km3
per year, at the Turkish-Syrian border, with the intention of reaching an agree-
ment with Syria on security matters.34 At the same time, a Mutual Security
Accord was signed, setting out that each state would prevent activities against
the other from originating in its territory and that criminals responsible for ter-
rorist activities would be extradited. Ozal believed that the PKK would cease
its attacks if Syria stopped supporting it. For a while, it seemed that Ozal’s
hopes had been fulfilled, but a dramatic upsurge in fighting between Turkish
and PKK forces in 1988/1989 led to renewed Turkish concerns about Syrian
support for the PKK.35 On the other hand, the Syrian-Iraqi water accord of
1990 designated Syria’s share of the Euphrates waters as 42 percent and the
remaining 58 percent was allocated to Iraq as a fixed annual total percentage.36
However, the existence of these bilateral accords, both relating to only
the Euphrates, could not be accepted as evidence of cooperation. Each
agreement was bilateral and predominantly concerned with water quantity
issues. The riparians could not agree on more comprehensive forms of coop-
eration that would adopt an integrated approach to the various aspects of
water use and needs (quality, quantity, flood protection, preservation of
ecosystems, and prevention of accidents) and might potentially facilitate
negotiations by linking water management issues. The agreements lacked
effective organizational backup, at least in the form of joint monitoring.
Most critically, both treaties failed to address fluctuations in flow, meaning
that they contained no clauses referring to the periods of drought and flood-
ing that occur frequently in the basin and cause drastic changes in the flow
regime that require urgent adjustment to the use of the rivers.37
During that period, water relations among the riparian states were mostly
handled at diplomatic level through the exchange of curt diplomatic notes.
When diplomacy failed to ease the tensions, meetings were held at the high-
est level where the driving rationale was the pursuit of Turkey’s, Syria’s, and
Iraq’s strategic national objectives. Yet these strategic interests lacked sound
and scientific foundations, particularly when they were most needed as water
shortages grew and water quality deteriorated. Instead, rhetoric prevailed and
all parties stressed the need to achieve food self-sufficiency, food security,
or other social and regional development objectives,38 claiming them to be
strategic national goals. Consequently, the riparians’ negotiating strategies
were incompatible and, not surprisingly, favored national claims.
Rivers for Cooperative Endeavors

In the first decade of the 2000s, transboundary water policies evolved from
hostile to cooperative. Political will expressed at the highest decisionmaking
levels was most decisive in building these cooperative frameworks. How-
ever, water bureaucracies also had a role in that change.
In 1998, Turkish-Syrian relations became tense when Turkey threatened

Syria with military measures to prevent Syria from providing ample support
to the PKK. War was prevented by the mediation of then Egyptian president
Hosni Mubarak and Iranian foreign minister Kamal Kharrazi. Syria decided
not to risk a war and expelled the PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan who was
subsequently captured in February 1999. This event paved the way for the
conclusion of the Turkish-Syrian Ceyhan Security Agreement in October
1998. Shortly after signing, Syria requested the resumption of the JTC meet-
ings to enable the water issue to be considered.39
The Ceyhan Agreement (Adana Accords) marked the beginning of a
new era based on more cooperative initiatives of interest to both sides. One
of the first initiatives was the 2001 Joint Communiqué between the South-
eastern Anatolia Project Regional Development Administration (GAP RDA)
under the Turkish prime minister and the General Organisation for Land
Development (GOLD) under the Syrian Ministry of Irrigation.40 The GAP
RDA-GOLD cooperation was based on the common understanding of the
sustainable utilization of the region’s land and water resources through joint
rural development and environmental protection projects, joint training pro-
grams, exchanges of experts and technology, and study missions. Syrian and
Turkish delegations visited each other’s development project sites. During
these contacts, the two sides had opportunities to exchange their experiences
of positive and negative impacts of water and land resource development
projects going back several decades. Once again, the water issue was rele-
gated to the technical level, as in the 1960s, and left to intergovernmental
networks composed of technocrats. However, unlike the technical negotia-
tions in the 1960s, the GAP-GOLD dialogue covered such disparate issues
as urban and rural water quality management and rural development (par-
ticipatory irrigation management and agricultural research). Even though the
dialogue between these two leading institutions has not resulted in concrete
project implementation or regular exchange programs, it has served as a
semiformal consultation mechanism and paved the way for initiatives taken
by other government departments and agencies in 2008 and 2009 with the
similar objective of solving transboundary water problems within a broader
framework of political, economic, and social development.41
High-Level Strategic Cooperation Councils and Water

In 2008, the Turkish government embarked on a number of cooperative for-
eign policy initiatives involving its southern neighbors, Syria and Iraq in
particular. The political reasons behind these initiatives can be analyzed at
contextual, regional, bilateral, and domestic levels, although that analysis is
beyond the scope of this article. However, the political will expressed and
sealed at the highest level in Turkey for broader cooperation with its south-
ern neighbors was also reflected in official statements and cooperative trans-
boundary water development and management initiatives in the Euphrates,

Tigris, and Orontes river systems.42
In this context, Turkey and Iraq signed a Joint Political Declaration on
the Establishment of the High-Level Strategic Cooperation Council (HSCC)
on 10 July 2008. The first ministerial meeting of the HSCC, a forum for
joint meetings of the Iraqi and Turkish cabinets, was held in Istanbul on
17–18 September 2009. The Turkish foreign minister was accompanied by
seven executive members of the cabinet, including the ministers of trade,
energy, transport, agriculture, and the environment (water) while the Iraqi
minister was accompanied by nine executive cabinet members, the counter-
parts of the Turkish ministers, and their deputy ministers.
According to the strategic partnership agreement between Turkey and
Iraq, the HSCC was to meet at least once a year, with the prime ministers
of the two countries chairing the meetings. Ministerial meetings, on the
other hand, would be held at least three times a year and technical delega-
tions would come together four times a year. Decisions made by the HSCC
would be implemented within the framework of an action plan. Barham
Salih, Iraq’s former deputy prime minister, called the agreement “the start-
ing point of the Middle East common market” and likened the improving
relations between Iraq and Turkey to the relationship between France and
Germany in the 1950s.43
On the other front, the first Turkish-Syrian HSCC meeting took place in
Damascus on 22–23 December 2009. These cooperative initiatives taken at
the highest political level made it possible to resolve prolonged disputes
between Turkey and Syria. Thus, under the chairmanship of two ministers,
Syria’s minister of irrigation and Turkey’s minister of the environment and
forestry, a commission composed of technocrats and diplomats from the two
countries met in Ankara on 8 December 2009 to prepare the framework and
contents of the series of protocols, Memorandums of Understanding
(MoUs), on the modalities of development, management, and use of the
waters of the Euphrates, the Tigris, and the Orontes rivers.
That period of rapprochement showed that, led by politicians at the
highest level, the riparians preferred functional cooperation and a benefit-
sharing approach.44 One productive approach to the development of trans-
boundary waters was to take a regional view of the benefits to be derived
from the basin. The Euphrates-Tigris case supports the observation that,
when negotiations focused solely on water sharing, upstream and down-
stream differences were exacerbated, giving greater prominence to water
gains and losses. This has regularly required the riparians to see water as
more than just a commodity to be divided—a zero-sum, rights-based view—
and to develop a positive-sum, integrative approach that ensures the equi-
table allocation not of the water but of the benefits derived from it. Adding
development opportunities in other sectors may enlarge the area of possible
agreement and make implementation more manageable. Multiresource link-

ages may offer more opportunities for the generation of creative solutions,
allowing for greater economic efficiency through a “basket of benefits.”45
Broadening the scope of the cooperation agenda to take in sectors of
socioeconomic development, including water, and simultaneously fostering
a situation of regional interdependence were in fact the main aims underly-
ing the establishment of both the Turkish-Syrian and Turkish-Iraqi HSCCs,
which were set up to address more than the water predicament in the region.
However, the comprehensive and strategic nature of the HSCCs resulted in
an innovative approach to transboundary water issues in that the water and
diplomatic bureaucracies were empowered to draft and sign a series of pro-
tocols addressing problems associated with water development, manage-
ment, and use.
In fact, the Turkish and Syrian authorities managed to convene the sec-
ond meetings of their HSCC at ministerial and prime ministerial levels in
October and December 2010, respectively.46 In addition to issuing a joint
statement on bilateral and regional cooperation, they evaluated the progress
made in implementing the agreements between the two countries signed in
2009.47
The second meeting of the Turkey-Iraq HSCC was postponed, however,
due to the delay in the formation of the Iraqi government in 2010.48 Clearly,
this HSCC is going to remain dormant for some time longer, particularly
until a solution is found to the political crisis that surfaced as Turkey began
to denounce the Syrian government in August 2011 for ill-treating protest-
ers.49 Interestingly, however, even under these unfavorable political condi-
tions, middle-level layers of both bureaucracies remain eager to maintain the
contacts that were established under the auspices of the joint cabinet (min-
isterial) meetings of the HSCC. There are plans to convene international
multilateral meetings of appropriate professionals and stakeholders to dis-
cuss such issues covered by the bilateral protocols as the protection, efficient
utilization, and management of water resources.50
New Water Protocols and

New Perspectives on Transboundary Water Issues
The Water Protocol Between Turkey and Iraq

At the Turkey-Iraq HSCC meeting, forty-eight MoUs were signed by the
two countries on 15 October 2009, one of them concerning water. Even
though the river is not referred to by name in the title,51 the text of this MoU
explicitly states that it concerns the waters of the Euphrates and the Tigris
rivers. In line with the envisaged functional approach, the MoU was signed
by Iraq’s Ministry of Water Resources and Turkey’s Ministry of the Envi-
ronment and Forestry (MoEF), the government departments responsible for

all technical matters relating in particular to water development and man-
agement and the protection of water resources. The MoU identified particu-
lar issues requiring urgent transboundary cooperation, including assessment
of water resources, which are tending to diminish because of increases in
water use and climate change; assessment and calibration of existing hydro-
logical measuring stations; modernization of existing irrigation systems; pre-
vention of water losses from domestic water supply systems and provision
of safe water; construction of water supply and water treatment facilities in
Iraq, with the participation of Turkish companies; development of mecha-
nisms to solve problems arising during the dry period; and joint investiga-
tion, planning, and projects for flood protection.
The modalities of cooperation are also described in the MoU. The par-
ties agree to transfer knowledge, experience, and technology on water man-
agement practices by developing cooperative projects and conducting
research and development activities. It is interesting to note that, rather than
arguing over only their respective water shares, as happened at past JTC
meetings, the Iraqi and Turkish authorities focused on common issues in
transboundary water management and use. Those issues are directly related
to water development, use, and management practices at national level,
which actually have direct impacts on transboundary water policies and
practices. The protocol also specifically addresses emerging regional (and
global) issues such as the effects of climate change on regional water
resources, which had been neglected for decades. Another distinct charac-
teristic of the MoU is that it envisages involving such nongovernmental
entities as academic institutions, private firms, and nongovernmental organ-
izations in the activities that it covers.
The Orontes: From a Bone of Contention

to a Medium of Cooperation
At the first meeting of their HSCC held in Damascus on 23–24 December
2009, Turkey and Syria signed fifty protocols, four of which concerned
regional waters (i.e., those of the Euphrates, Tigris, and Orontes). In this
context, the parties agreed to build a joint dam where the Orontes River
crosses the Turkish-Syrian border.52 They agreed to share the cost of the
dam, which is to produce energy for both sides and irrigate 20,000 ha of
agricultural land in Turkey and 10,000 ha in Syria.53 The foundation stones
were laid in February 2011, with the Turkish and Syrian prime ministers in
attendance, just before the unrest broke out in Syria in the spring of 2011.
Although the dam will take some years to complete and work may even
be stalled by the recent disagreements between Turkey and Syria, the sign-
ing of an official protocol on the waters of the Orontes was a breakthrough
in Turkish-Syrian hydropolitics and also in wider political relations. For
decades, Syria did not recognize the Turkish-Syrian political border where
the Orontes crosses it, claiming territorial rights to the Turkish province of
Hatay (historically, Alexandretta). The signing of the protocol implied the
recognition of the border. Also for decades, Turkey called for regulation of
the waters of the Orontes River, which often fluctuated, causing severe
flooding or drought in downstream Turkish towns and villages. However,
Syria never agreed to build water development structures on the border,
arguing that the Orontes is a national river. In this respect, the Protocol of
December 2009 marks a major change in Syria’s attitude. In fact, it marks
the beginning of flourishing cooperation between otherwise hostile riparian
states after their agreement to build joint dams on their joint borders.54
Syria’s Emerging Need for Water from the Tigris

Turkey and Syria signed a protocol on the Tigris under which Turkey agreed
that Syria could withdraw an annual 1.25 km3 of water, provided that the
flow of water is within the average.55 The withdrawals are based on monthly
flows and are to be made at appropriate times and places.56 This protocol is
further evidence of a change in the positions of the water and diplomatic
bureaucracies, particularly in Syria. When the hydropolitical tensions were
at their peak in the 1980s, Syria had never agreed to discuss the waters of
the Tigris, considering it to be insignificant because of its geographical loca-
tion in the basin: the Tigris forms the boundary between Turkey and Syria
and between Syria and Iraq for about 40 km. At that time, Syria focused
almost exclusively on the Euphrates, prioritizing the completion of the
Euphrates Valley Project. As Syrian technocrats eventually encountered
technical and social difficulties in reclaiming land in the Euphrates Valley,
their attention turned to northeastern Syria where it was possible to expand
the amount of irrigated land.
Issues of Common Concern: Protocols on Water Efficiency,

Drought Management, and Quality Remediation
The other two protocols signed by Turkey and Syria cover issues that have
only recently come to the agenda of transboundary water negotiations
among the technocrats and diplomats concerned.57 In this respect, it is inter-
esting to note that this was the first official agreement concluded by the two
countries on the protection of the environment, water quality management,
water efficiency, drought management, and flood protection with a view
toward addressing the adverse effects of climate change. Unlike the bilateral
protocol concluded in 1987 on sharing the waters of the Euphrates, these
protocols focused on how the riparian states were to use, manage, protect,
and develop the diminishing water resources of the Euphrates and the Tigris
rivers. An analysis of the wording of these two protocols reveals that the
water bureaucracies had a chance to open up the countries’ black boxes. On
the basis of the political will expressed at the highest level of the HSCC,
water technocrats have together concentrated on the urgent problems of the
acute shortage and deteriorating quality of water resources. Gone are the
days when the two countries adopted reserved and rigid positions on their
water shares and rights: now they openly discuss new and efficient methods
and procedures for managing the supply of and demand for water for agri-
cultural, industrial, and domestic purposes. The protocols cover a range of
issues. These include various forms of supply management such as cloud
seeding (artificial rain) to increase precipitation, the installation of early
flood warning systems and flood protection measures, and agricultural prac-
tices with drought-resistant crops. They also include various forms of
demand management such as sharing of knowledge and experience about
modern irrigation techniques; prevention of water losses in domestic water
supply; organization of training programs relating to the operation of dams
and the efficient utilization of water resources; sharing of knowledge and
technology pertaining to wastewater storage and the reuse of treated waste-
water in agriculture and industry; and cooperation on the development of
land use techniques to increase the amount of soil and water saved.
The general approach and the content of the protocols reveal too that
Turkey’s firsthand experience with the European Union’s water policy and
approach to water management has been broadly translated into the princi-
ples envisioned in the protocols. Therefore, the staff of Turkey’s MoEF58 in
particular supported these protocols vigorously because they felt that their
implementation would be useful practice for the implementation and exten-
sion of the new water legislation in Turkey transposed from the European
Union’s water legislation.59 The European Union’s “river basin level” water
management approach in the form of its Water Framework Directive of 2000
will not only be applied in Turkey’s national river basins, but also in such
transboundary river basins as the Euphrates, Tigris, and Orontes. Moreover,
common standards for measuring (gauging) quantities of water and moni-
toring the quality of transboundary water are among the MoEF’s main objec-
tives in its cooperation with Syria and Iraq. In this context, one of the main
aims of the Turkish bureaucracy is to establish environmental quality stan-
dards and to implement the polluter-pays and cost-recovery principles at
transboundary level, as the relevant MoU stipulates.60
The Ministers’ Network and the JTC Revitalized

On 22 March 2007, at the opening of an international conference in Antalya,
Turkey, the Turkish minister of the environment and forestry invited the Syr-
ian minister of irrigation and the Iraqi minister of water resources to join
him in discussing how to set up a cooperative framework to deal with
regional water issues.61 These ministers decided that the periodic meetings
of the JTC, which had been held between 1982 and 1992 before being com-
pletely abandoned, should be resumed. Thus, a series of JTC meetings have

been held since, the first in Damascus, Syria, on 7–11 May 2007, which was
followed by a tripartite ministerial meeting in Damascus, on 10–11 January
2008, at which it was agreed that training programs on irrigation water man-
agement and efficient utilization of water resources would be conducted. At
the second JTC meeting held in Istanbul on 23–24 February 2009, officials
decided that the next ministerial meeting would be held in Baghdad, oppor-
tunities for developing joint projects would be seized, and a JTC bylaw stat-
ing its mission and responsibilities would be adopted.
On 3 September 2009, both a tripartite ministerial meeting and the third
meeting of the JTC took place in Ankara. The three sides decided to coop-
erate in initiating water training programs and in monitoring and exchanging
information on climate change and drought conditions in the three countries.
They also agreed to erect new water flow gauging stations and to modern-
ize the existing ones. After talks between the Iraqi foreign minister and the
Turkish environment minister, Turkey further agreed to provide 550 m3/sec
of water from the Euphrates River during the dry season in the autumn of
2009.62 In March 2008, the Turkish, Iraqi, and Syrian ministers agreed to
establish a joint water institute in Turkey, with each riparian appointing fif-
teen water engineers to conduct studies on water use efficiency and
improved water management in the region. The institute was to map water
resources in the region and draw up a report on measures that the respective
countries should take to ensure effective management of those resources.
The engineers from the three countries have been meeting to exchange infor-
mation and know-how. The first training activity in this context concerned
modern irrigation practices in the region and the second focused on dam
construction and safety. The group has also developed an interest in study-
ing climate change and its impacts on regional waters. The training institute
in Istanbul hosted the third training program for experts in that field.63
The ministers’ initiative in reconvening the JTC has facilitated the draft-
ing of a series of MoUs, putting an official seal on cooperation. Moreover,
their network has also led to a series of training programs that have helped
water bureaucracies in particular to achieve a certain level of common
understanding and discourse.64 Furthermore, the ministerial network has
proved to be capable of flexibility and spontaneity in addressing acute water
shortages in the region by making swift decisions to adjust flows to meet the
needs of downstream riparians.
The Euphrates-Tigris Initiative for Cooperation:

A Network of Academics and Professionals
Another significant development in the region is the Euphrates-Tigris Initia-
tive for Cooperation (ETIC), which was established in May 2005 by a group
of scholars and professionals from the three main riparian countries.65 The
overall goal of the initiative is to promote cooperation among the three ripar-
ians with a view toward achieving technical, social, and economic develop-
ment in the Euphrates-Tigris region. ETIC’s composition and role are
remarkably consistent with the epistemic community’s theory and role in
institutional bargaining. An epistemic community is defined as a “network of
professionals with recognised expertise and competence in a particular
domain and an authoritative claim to policy-relevant knowledge within that
domain or issue-area.”66
ETIC’s origins can be traced back to early meetings of scientists from
Iraq, Syria, and Turkey as well as the United States in 2004.67 This group
of dedicated scholars has been meeting with flexible agendas. At the first
stage of these gatherings, the participants shared information on national
water policies and raised the significance of water issues in the context of
the three riparian countries’ socioeconomic development targets. The mem-
bers of the group were quick to develop a common understanding of exist-
ing conditions, pressing problems, and needs in the region, which led them
to decide to turn their expertise and experience to account in ETIC.
ETIC is a track-two effort, meaning that it is voluntary, nonofficial, non-
binding, not for profit, and nongovernmental. It is not affiliated with any
government, but seeks to contribute positively to efforts, official and unof-
ficial, that will enhance the dialogue, understanding, and collaboration
among the riparians of the Euphrates-Tigris system. As a multiriparian ini-
tiative, ETIC has been unique in that it looks beyond water rights per se to
themes related to environmental protection, development and gender equal-
ity, water management, governance, and grassroots participation in a holis-
tic, multistakeholder framework.68
ETIC’s members contend that awareness of socioeconomic develop-
ment is essential to an understanding of the real dynamics of the region.
ETIC’s ultimate objective is defined by the founders as being a situation in
which the “quality of life for people in all communities, including rural and
urban areas, is improved, and harmony among countries and with nature in
the Euphrates-Tigris region is achieved,” so that cooperation on technical,
social, and economic development in the Euphrates-Tigris region may be
promoted. In line with its vision and overall goal, ETIC prepares and imple-
ments joint training and capacity-building programs69 as well as undertaking
research projects70 aimed at responding to the common needs and concerns
of the people in the region.71 In conducting these activities, ETIC has built
partnerships with international organizations, nongovernmental organiza-
tions, and universities.
Conclusion
In this article, we described the evolution and change in transboundary water
policies in the Euphrates-Tigris river system with the aid of chronological
analyses of the changing discourses and practices of the water and diplo-
matic bureaucracies. We revealed that changes in approach from water rights
to water needs, for instance, or more particularly from concentrating solely
on sharing the quantity to managing the quality of water can be attributed
partly to bureaucratic learning processes.
In his seminal work, Charles Hermann argues that foreign policy
changes can be placed on a continuum indicating the magnitude of the shift
from minor adjustment changes, through both program and goal changes, to
fundamental changes in a country’s international orientation.72 In line with
Hermann’s definition of major foreign policy changes, the program changes
could explain the changes in the foreign policies of the riparian states. They
are defined as the changes made in the methods or means by which a prob-
lem is addressed. At that level of change, what is done and how it is done
change, but the purposes for which it is done remain unchanged.73 Changes
are qualitative and involve new instruments of statecraft. Indeed, throughout
the evolution of their transboundary water policies, the goal pursued by each
riparian has not changed: Turkey has been eager to determine what is needed
and how resources should be allocated while Iraq and Syria have adopted
the same line of reasoning that a sharing agreement should be concluded on
the basis of a declaration of fixed quotas.
Yet there has been a change in what is done and how it is done in the
region since the early 2000s. The high-level contacts have produced a frame-
work for regional cooperation of which water is an integral component. Issues
of mutual concern, such as drought management, efficient management of
resources, and the improvement of water quality, have come to the fore during
the transboundary water talks. Moreover, new instruments of statecraft (i.e.,
environmental bureaucracies) and nongovernmental entities (i.e., ETIC) have
begun to play key roles in shaping the water cooperation agenda.
However, our thorough analyses reveal that the change involving vari-
ous cooperative initiatives is more closely and intimately related to the
change in overall political relations, with decisions being made at the high-
est level. It cannot be denied, therefore, that the overarching problem of
deteriorating political relations in the region may have a counter effect on
the development of transboundary water cooperation. As the political will
fades, particularly in Turkish-Syrian relations, technocratic and diplomatic
bureaucracies are encountering serious difficulties in implementing the pro-
tocols because they are closely linked to decisionmaking at the highest level.
But it should also be noted that, since the early 2000s, contacts have been
made, existing networks have been revitalized, and new ones have been cre-
ated. Thus, a partial institutionalization of water cooperation had already
begun before it was abruptly halted in late 2011 as overarching bilateral
political relations worsened. When it has a chance to resume, transbound-
ary water cooperation should start from a variety of perspectives and issues,
which may again provide opportunities for regional cooperation.
In such a context, the array of perspectives and issues should include,

among other things, joint initiatives for the collection of reliable data on sur-
face and groundwater resources. In fact, water technocrats drafting the
recent protocols have already emphasized this aspect by referring to the
issue of the assessment of water resources and the calibration of existing
hydrological measurement stations in the bilateral protocols. On the basis
of such objective and consistent knowledge of the river system, joint proj-
ects could be conducted in such water-related development fields as energy,
agriculture, the environment, and health.
One basic development objective that has had and continues to have a
major influence on rivalries concerning water usage is the expansion of irri-
gated areas in Turkey, Syria, and Iraq.74 While rhetoric suggests that overall
growth and especially regional growth of population, for whom food secu-
rity is required, account for the largest share of total irrigation water use in
Syria and in the irrigated areas of the GAP (where cotton is planted on 75
percent to 80 percent of the area cultivated), it is in fact the nonfood crop
cotton which, together with irrigated wheat, is largely responsible. Iraqi agri-
culture, on the other hand, uses about 90 percent of its water to promote the
cultivation of irrigated wheat and barley on marginal land with high pur-
chase prices and subsidized agricultural inputs, including water.
Where their agricultural development strategies are concerned, the three
countries have some unsustainable features in common, although to different
degrees: investment in irrigated agriculture and the high demand for water
are driven by the low cost of irrigation water; the lack of demand for man-
agement practices has contributed to the present low efficiency of water use;
and high water consumption has resulted in waterlogged areas and saline
soils, the reclamation of which require drainage systems and additional water
for leaching. Whatever the political, social, and economic rationale for
expanding irrigated agriculture, it must be asked whether irrigation-based
economic strategies are sustainable, given the constraints (in resource and
funding terms) and the regional implications of the intensification of water
resource use. Since all three countries are engaged in water resource devel-
opment through their involvement in the building of infrastructure (dams),
transboundary cooperation should also include methods and means of ade-
quately resolving environmental and social issues during the planning and
implementation of these large-scale projects.
With the additional adverse effects of the domestic unrest in both Syria
and Iraq, further complications can be expected. In this unfavorable atmos-
phere for dialogue at the governmental level, such track-two initiatives
(unofficial, professional networks) as ETIC might be consulted since they
provide necessary scientific support for the operationalization of the coop-
erative agreements in the water and socioeconomic sectors. ETIC might
engage a variety of stakeholders such as academics, professionals, and rep-
resentatives of civil society organizations and business circles as well as the

competent authorities of international agencies in the implementation of
small-scale, but sustainable cooperative projects relating to various aspects
of common concern: water quantity and quality management, health, agri-
cultural development, energy production, infrastructure development, and
environmental protection. After all, the track-two initiatives are, by their
nature, meant to develop a common understanding of problems and solu-
tions cross-nationally and to help the various governments to reach conver-
gent solutions even in the midst of political crises.75
Notes
Aysegul Kibaroglu is professor and faculty member in the International Relations
Department at Okan University in Istanbul. She served as the adviser to the president
of the Southeastern Anatolia Project Regional Development Administration from
2001 to 2003. Her areas of research include transboundary water politics, interna-
tional law, political geography, and Turkish water policy. Her publications include
Building a Regime for the Waters of the Euphrates-Tigris River Basin (2002) and
Turkey’s Water Policy: National Frameworks and International Cooperation,
coedited with Waltina Scheumann (2011).
Waltina Scheumann joined the German Development Institute/Department of
Environmental Policy and Natural Resources Management in 2007, where she leads
research on sustainable dam development in Brazil, China, India, Turkey, Ghana, and
Cambodia. Her research covers global water governance, institutional arrangements
of natural resource (water-land) regimes, and transboundary water politics. She is the
coeditor of Turkey’s Water Policy: National Frameworks and International Cooper-
ation (2011).
1. Iran is also a riparian in that it contributes between 9.7 and 11.2 km3 of water
a year to the Tigris through its tributaries in the north and between 20 and 24.8 km3
to the Shatt al-Arab waterway, which unites the Tigris and the Euphrates through the
Kharun River. See Food and Agriculture Organization, Water Reports 34, Irrigation
in the Middle East Region in Figures, Aquastat Survey (Rome: Food and Agriculture
Organization, 2008).
2. For details of the geographical characteristics of the Euphrates and Tigris
river system, see Aysegul Kibaroglu, Building a Regime for the Waters of the
Euphrates and Tigris River Basin (London: Kluwer Law International, 2002); see
also Aysegul Kibaroglu and Waltina Scheumann, “Euphrates-Tigris River System:
Political Rapprochement and Transboundary Water Cooperation,” in Aysegul Kiba-
roglu, Waltina Scheumann, and Annika Kramer, eds., Turkey’s Water Policy (New
York: Springer Verlag, 2011).
3. N. Kliot, Water Resources and Conflict in the Middle East (London: Rout-
ledge, 1994).
4. P. Beaumont, “The Euphrates River: An International Problem of Water
Resources Development,” Environmental Conservation 5 (1978): 35–43.
5. O. Bilen, “Prospects for Technical Cooperation in the Euphrates-Tigris
Basin,” in A. K. Biswas, ed., International Waters of the Middle East: From
Euphrates-Tigris to Nile (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994). See also M. L.
Belül, “Hydropolitics of the Euphrates-Tigris Basin” (master’s thesis, Middle East
Technical University, 1996), p. 67; John F. Kolars and William A. Mitchell, The
Euphrates River and Southeast Anatolia Development Project (Carbondale: Southern

Illinois University Press, 1991).
6. K. Ubell, “Iraq’s Water Resources,” Nature and Resources 7 (1971): 3–9; C.
Gischler, Water Resources in the Arab Middle East and North Africa (Cambridge,
UK: Menas Resources Studies, 1979); M. Shahin, “Review and Assessment of Water
Resources in the Arab World,” Water International 14 (1989): 206–219.
7. Iraq also has a limited amount of groundwater, but it is a shrinking source
because withdrawals far exceed natural discharge rates. See UN Educational, Scien-
tific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Water Assessment Program,
“Water Resources in Iraq: Quick Facts” (on file with the authors). See also S.
Murthy, “Iraq’s Constitutional Mandate to Justly Distribute Water: The Implications
of Federalism, Islam, International Law and Human Rights,” George Washington
International Law Review 52 (2011): 752.
8. M. Daoudy, The Water Divide Between Syria, Turkey and Iraq, Negotiation,
Security and Power Asymmetry (Paris: CNRS Editions, 2005).
9. Aysegul Kibaroglu and O. Unver, “An Institutional Framework for Facilitat-
ing Cooperation in the Euphrates-Tigris River Basin,” International Negotiation: A
Journal of Theory and Practice 5 (2000): 312.
10. See Belül, “Hydropolitics of the Euphrates-Tigris Basin.”
11. “The Treaty of Friendship and Good Neighbourly Relations Between Iraq and
Turkey, Protocol on Flow Regulation of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers and of Their
Tributaries,” United Nations, Legislative Texts and Treaty Provisions Concerning the
Utilisation of International Rivers for Other Purposes than Navigation, UN/Doc.
ST/LEG/SER. B/12 (1963).
12. International Water Power and Dam Construction 44 (1992):12.
13. A. Richards and J. Waterbury, A Political Economy of the Middle East (Boul-
der: Westview, 1990).
14. R. Hinnebusch, Peasant and Bureaucracy in Baathist Syria (Boulder: West-
view, 1989).
15. K. McLachlan, The South-East Anatolia Project (GAP) and Its Effect on
Water Supply and Management in Iraq (London: University of London, 1991).
16. J. A. Allan, Agricultural Sector in Iraq (London: University of London,
1990).
17. In hydrological terms, Turkey has twenty-five large river basins exhibiting a
wide variation of average annual precipitation, evaporation, and surface run-off
parameters. The Tigris-Euphrates basin is the largest and has great potential for the
development of natural resources. See S. Tigrek and Aysegul Kibaroglu, “Euphrates-
Tigris River System: Political Rapprochement and Transboundary Water Coopera-
tion,” in Aysegul Kibaroglu, Waltina Scheumann, and Annika Kramer, eds., Turkey’s
Water Policy (New York: Springer Verlag, 2011).
18. H. Meliczek, “Land Settlement in the Euphrates Basin of Syria,” in Land
Reform: Land Settlement and Cooperatives (Rome: Food and Agriculture Organiza-
tion, 1987).
19. J. A. Allan, Agricultural Sector in Iraq (London: University of London,
1990), pp. 1–2.
20. See Kibaroglu and Unver, “An Institutional Framework for Facilitating
Cooperation,” pp. 311–330.
21. See J. Cooley, “The War over Water,” Foreign Policy 54(1984): 3–26; T. Naff
and R. Matson, Water in the Middle East: Conflict or Cooperation (Boulder, CO:
Westview Press, 1984); J. R. Starr and D. C. Stoll, US Foreign Policy on Water
Resources in the Middle East (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and Interna-
tional Studies, December 1987); J. R. Starr, “Water Wars,” Foreign Policy 82 (Spring
1991): 17–36; J. Bulloch and A. Darwish, Water Wars: Coming Conflicts in the Mid-
dle East (1993). These authors were among the first to draw attention to the conflicts
in the Euphrates-Tigris basin. They assume that the struggle over limited and threat-
ened water resources could sever already fragile ties among regional states and lead
to an unprecedented upheaval in the area. Another strand of literature argues that it is
not water scarcity that is the defining variable in the conflictive attitudes of the ripar-
ians, but second-order resource constraints (L. Ohlsson, “Environment, Scarcity and
Conflict: A Study of Malthusian Concerns,” report, Department of Peace and Devel-
opment Research, Göteborg University, 1999); see, for example, Kibaroglu and
Unver, “An Institutional Framework for Facilitating Cooperation,” pp. 311–330;
Kibaroglu, Building a Regime for the Waters.
22. Disputes over this province emerged in the 1930s when, following a
plebiscite held at the end of the French mandate, Hatay became part of Turkey,
although this was disputed by Syria. See M. Kibaroglu and Aysegul Kibaroglu,
Global Security Watch Turkey: A Reference Handbook (Westport, CN: Praeger Secu-
rity International, 2009).
23. See M. Benli Altunisik and O. Tur, “From Distant Neighbors to Partners?
Changing Syrian-Turkish Relations,” Security Dialogue 37 (2006): 232–234.
24. Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Water Issues Between Turkey, Syria
and Iraq, Perceptions: Journal of International Affairs 1 (1996): 105.
25. Kibaroglu, Building a Regime for the Waters.
26. The regional context in which water issues may or may not lead to interstate
conflict, and the role that nonwater issues played (i.e., territorial claims, support for
separatist movements, security issues in general) are analyzed, for example, by N.
Beshorner, “Water and Instability in the Middle East,” Adelphi Paper No. 273 (Win-
ter 1992/93) (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies); W. Scheumann,
“The Euphrates Issue in Turkish-Syrian Relations,” in H. G. Brauch, P. H. Liotta, S.
Marquina, P. F. Rogers, M. El-Sayed Selim, eds., Security and Environment in the
Mediterranean: Conceptualising Security and Environmental Conflicts (Berlin:
Springer, 2003); F. M. Lorenz and E. J. Erickson, “The Euphrates Triangle: Security
Implications of the Southeastern Anatolia Project” (Washington, DC: National
Defense University Press, 1999).
27. G. Kut, “Burning Waters: The Hydropolitics of the Euphrates and Tigris,”
New Perspectives on Turkey 9 (1993): 5.
28. Kibaroglu, Building a Regime for the Waters.
29. Article IV of the Helsinki Rules on the Uses of the Waters of International
Rivers, and Article 5 of the UN Convention on the Law of Non-Navigational Uses of
International Watercourses are dedicated to the principle of equitable and reasonable
utilization and participation. In addition, these principles of the Helsinki Rules and
the convention enumerate the factors relevant to equitable and reasonable utilization
in Article V and Article 6 of these documents, respectively. See ILA, Report of the
Fifty-second Conference Held at Helsinki, 484 et seq. (1966); UN General Assembly
Res. 51/229 (21 May 1997) (Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of
International Watercourses).
30. For further details on the Three-Stage Plan, see Kibaroglu, Building a Regime
for the Waters.
31. P. A. Williams, “Turkey’s Water Diplomacy: A Theoretical Discussion,” in
Aysegul Kibaroglu, Waltina Scheumann, and Annika Kramer, eds., Turkey’s Water
Policy (New York: Springer Verlag), pp. 197–214.
32. The final communiqués of the sixteen Joint Technical Committee meetings
were reviewed with the permission of officials of the State Hydraulic Works and
revealed the above arguments (on file with the authors).
33. For the incentives for cooperation resulting from the linking of intersectoral
and intrawater sector issues, see D. G. LeMarquand, International Rivers: The Poli-
tics of Cooperation (Vancouver: Westwater Research Center, University of British
Columbia, 1977); I. Dombrowsky, “The Role of Intra-water Sector Issue Linkage in
the Resolution of Transboundary Water Conflicts,” Water International 35, no. 2
(2010): 132–149.
34. Protocol on Matters Pertaining to Economic Cooperation Between the
Republic of Turkey and the Syrian Arab Republic, United Nations Treaty Series
87/12171, 17/7/1987.
35. Scheumann, “The Euphrates Issue.”
36. Law No. 14 of 1990, ratifying the joint minutes concerning the provisional
division of the waters of the Euphrates River. See http://ocid.nacse.org/qml/research
/tfdd/toTFDDdocs/257ENG.htm (accessed 30 May 2010).
37. M. Schiffler, “International Water Agreements: A Comparative View,” in W.
Scheumann and M. Schiffler, eds., Water in the Middle East: Potential for Conflicts
and Prospects for Cooperation (New York: Springer, 1998), pp. 31–45.
38. J. Barnes, “Managing the Waters of Ba’th Country: The Politics of Water
Scarcity in Syria,” Geopolitics 14 (2009): 510–530; L. M. Harris, “Water and Con-
flict Geographies of the Southeastern Anatolia Project,” Society and Natural
Resources 15 (2002): 743–759; M. Ahmad, “Agricultural Policy Issues and Chal-
lenges in Iraq: Short- and Medium-term Options,” in Kamil A. Mahdi, ed., Iraq’s
Economic Predicament (Reading, UK: Ithaca Press, 2001).
39. Scheumann, “The Euphrates Issue.”
40. A Joint Communiqué Between the Republic of Turkey, Prime Ministry,
Southeastern Anatolia Project Regional Development Administration (GAP) and the
Arab Republic of Syria, Ministry of Irrigation, General Organization for Land Devel-
opment, 23 August 2001, Ankara, Turkey (on file with the authors).
41. R. Durth has argued that the level of political and economic integration may
make a difference to the degree of cooperation. In nonintegrated regions, such as that
of the Euphrates-Tigris basin states, cooperation would be hampered by differing per-
ceptions of justice and equity while cooperation in integrated regions (e.g., the Euro-
pean Union, North America) would be facilitated by a changing role of governments
and the participation of the private sector in river management surpassing the narrow
confines of foreign relations. Cross-border information flows are no longer controlled
by governments and contacts also exist at the nongovernmental or private sector level
(e.g., the Rhine and the Great Lakes). R. Durth, “European Experience in the Solution
of Cross-border Environmental Problems,” Intereconomics (March/April 1996): 62–68.
42. The Orontes River (Asi) rises in Lebanon and flows through Syria and
Turkey. Turkey is the riparian farthest downstream in the river basin and faces
chronic water shortages due to prolonged droughts as well as the devastating impacts
of intermittent flooding. Since the early 1960s, Turkey has called for the Orontes to
be included in its water negotiations with Syria. For this purpose, Turkey has set up
a division in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to take charge of “regional waters,”
including the Euphrates-Tigris river basin and the Orontes. However, Syria continues
to refuse to discuss the Orontes, claiming that it is a national river because Hatay
(Alexandretta) belongs to Syria even though it became part of Turkey following a
plebiscite in the early 1930s.
43. “Iraq, Turkey Want to Integrate Economies, Transform Mideast,” Today’s
Zaman, E-Gazette, 18 September 2009, www.todayszaman.com/newsDetail_get
NewsById.action;jsessionid=0AB3CF80095212C8485703CB890052F3?newsId=187
456.
44. While water rights and water allocation in a transboundary context are diffi-
cult aspects, some authors advocate benefit sharing as a concept, which implies a
change from the mere volumetric allocation of water to the allocation of the benefits
derived from the use of the river. See C. W. Sadoff and D. Grey, “Beyond the River:
The Benefits of Cooperation on International Rivers,” Water Policy 4, no. 5 (2002):
389–403; C. W. Sadoff and D. Grey, “Cooperation on International Rivers: A Con-
tinuum for Securing and Sharing Benefits,” Water International 30 (2005): 420–427;
A. Klaphake, “Kooperation an internationalen Flüssen aus ökonomischer Sicht: das
Konzept des Benefit Sharing,” Discussion Paper No. 6/2005 (Bonn: German Devel-
opment Institute, 2005); and I. Dombrowsky, “Revisiting the Potential for Benefit
Sharing in the Management of Transboundary Rivers,” Water Policy 11, no 2 (2009):
125–149. The prospect of gaining more benefits than in the status quo or through
unilateral action encourages states to cooperate with each other in the use of shared
rivers. The concept suggests that countries can turn the perceived zero-sum game of
water allocation into a positive-sum game (i.e., a win-win situation in which all ripar-
ians are better off with cooperation than without it). Rather than conceptualizing
water use in quantitative terms, states should conceive of a river as a productive
resource and attempt to increase and, ideally, maximize the economic benefits of its
use. The notion of benefit sharing in the use of shared rivers is advanced inter alia by
Sadoff and Grey, “Beyond the River” (2002), and taken up by A. Kibaroglu, Build-
ing a Regime (2002), for the Euphrates-Tigris basin. Similarly, D. Phillips et al. argue
in Transboundary Water Cooperation as a Tool for Conflict Prevention and Broader
Benefit Sharing (Stockholm: Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2006) that bene-
fits can be generated in the economic, environmental, or security arena and that
activities in these various spheres may have spillover effects.
45. See A. T. Wolf, “Criteria for Equitable Allocations: The Heart of International
Water Conflict,” Natural Resources Forum 23, no. 3 (1999): 30; C. Sadoff and D.
Grey, “Cooperation on International Rivers: Continuum for Securing and Sharing
Benefits,” Water International 30, no. 4 (2005): 420–427.
46. Republic of Turkey, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Joint Statement of the Sec-
ond Ministerial Meeting of the High Level Strategic Cooperation Council Between
the Syrian Arab Republic and the Republic of Turkey, 2–3 October 2010, Lattakia,”
www.mfa.gov.tr/joint-statement-of-the-second-ministerial-meeting-of-the.en.mfa.
47. “Turkey, Syria Renew Diplomatic Pledges,” Hürriyet Daily News, 21 Decem-
ber, 2010, www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=turkey-and-syria-gathered-8220
intergovernmental-cabinet8221-in-ankara-2010-12-21.
48. However, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s two-day official visit to Iraq on
29–31 March 2011 is considered as a milestone and included some follow-up to the
forty-eight MoUs on more comprehensive economic integration signed during his
visit to Iraq on 15 October 2009. Before flying to Baghdad, Erdogan is reported as
saying: “Our aim is to turn the Mesopotamian basin into a joint area of stability and
welfare through a wide spectrum of projects, from energy to trade, from health to
construction and from water resources to transportation.” “Erdogan Says Turkey to
Make Mesopotamia Prosperity Region,” 3 March 2011, http://merryabla64.word
press.com/tag/recep-tayyip-erdogan-iraq-visit.
49. See www.mfa.gov.tr/relations-between-turkey%E2%80%93syria.en.mfa.
50. Nermin Cicek, senior expert, Ministry of Forestry and Water Affairs, inter-
viewed by A. Kibaroglu, Ankara, Turkey, 28 October 2011.
51. The Memorandum of Understanding Between the Ministry of the Environ-
ment and Forestry of the Republic of Turkey and the Ministry of Water Resources
of the Republic of Iraq on Water, 15 October 2009 (on file with the authors).
52. The Memorandum of Understanding Between the Government of the Repub-

lic of Turkey and the Government of the Syrian Arab Republic for the Construction
of a Joint Dam on the Orontes River Under the Name “Friendship Dam,” 23 Decem-
ber 2009 (on file with the authors).
53. Although the details of the dam will be set out in the feasibility study, it is
expected to be approximately 15 m high and have a water storage capacity of 110
million m3. Of that total, 40 million m3 will be used to prevent flooding and the rest
for energy production and irrigation.
54. Arpacay Dam between Turkey and Armenia (formerly part of the Soviet
Union) built in 1986, and the Lesotho Highlands Project between South Africa and
Lesotho are two examples of such ventures.
lic of Turkey and the Government of the Syrian Arab Republic on the Establishment
of a Pumping Station in the Territories of the Syrian Arab Republic for Water With-
drawal From the Tigris River, 23 December 2009 (on file with the authors).
56. In 2002, Syria and Iraq signed a bilateral agreement on the installation of a
Syrian pumping station on the Tigris River for irrigation purposes. The quantity of
water drawn annually from the Tigris, when the flow of water is within the average,
will be 1.25 billion m3 with a drainage capacity proportional to the projected surface
of 150,000 ha. Turkish officials at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and State
Hydraulic Works, personal communication with A. Kibaroglu, Ankara, 10 January
2010.
lic of Turkey and the Government of the Syrian Arab Republic in the Field of Effi-
cient Utilization of Water Resources and Coping with Drought; The Memorandum of
Understanding Between the Government of the Republic of Turkey and the Govern-
ment of the Syrian Arab Republic in the Field of Remediation of Water Quality, 23
December 2009 (on file with the authors). “Joint Statement of the First Meeting of
the High-Level Strategic Cooperation Council Between Syria and Turkey,” 24
December 2009, Syrian Arab News Agency.
58. In June 2011, the MoEF was reorganized and renamed the Ministry of
Forestry and Water Affairs. See www.ormansu.gov.tr.
59. Since the mid-2000s, a number of laws and bylaws have been adopted in
Turkey on environmental protection and water quality management in the domestic,
agricultural, and industrial sectors. This legal reorientation has been guided basically
by the European Union’s water legislation within the framework of the accession
process.
lic of Turkey and the Government of the Syrian Arab Republic in the Field of Reme-
diation of Water Quality, 23 December 2009.
61. Officials of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, interviewed by A. Kibaroglu,
Ankara, 19 April 2011.
62. The three states scheduled the following meeting of the JTC for January 2010
in Baghdad. It was postponed, however, due to parliamentary elections in Iraq and to
long delays in the formation of a government in Iraq. The meeting was again post-
poned because of the unrest in Syria and the election period in Turkey in June 2011.
63. Officials of the State Hydraulic Works, Ministry of the Environment and
Forestry, interviewed by A. Kibaroglu, 10 March 2010, Ankara.
64. George Soumi, minister of irrigation, interviewed by A. Kibaroglu, Damas-
cus, Syria, 11 November 2010.
65. This section is drawn mainly from Aysegul Kibaroglu, “The Role of Epis-
temic Communities in Offering New Cooperation Frameworks in the Euphrates-
Tigris Rivers System,” Journal of International Affairs 61, no. 2 (2008): 191–195.
66. P. M. Haas, “Introduction: Epistemic Communities and International Policy
Coordination,” International Organization 46 (1992): 13.
67. As a spinoff from a project conducted by the International Center for Peace
at the University of Oklahoma, some Iraqi, Syrian, and Turkish participants in the
project decided to launch a cooperation initiative in collaboration with the University
of Oklahoma and Kent State University. See www.ou.edu/ipc/etic.
68. Summary statement presented at the conclusion of the Twelfth World Water
Congress, 26 November 2005, New Delhi; ETIC Newsletter 1, No. 3, ETIC work-
shop synthesis document, World Water Week, Swedish International Water Institute,
Stockholm, 21 August 2006 (on file with the authors).
69. In 2006, the ETIC organized a training program on dam safety in collabora-
tion with the UNESCO for professionals from Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. In March
2009, it arranged a Workshop on Knowledge Technology in Gaziantep, Turkey, for
participants from Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. ETIC’s most recent training workshop
“Geographical Information Systems and their implementation in natural resources
management” was held in Aleppo in January 2010.
70. ETIC has been undertaking a research activity known as “Collaborative Plan-
ning and Knowledge Development in the Tigris-Euphrates Region.” The stakehold-
ers in this activity are Iraqi, Syrian, and Turkish university faculty members (on file
with the authors).
71. ETIC Newsletter 1, no. 4 (2006) (on file with the authors).
72. Charles Hermann, “Changing Course: When Governments Choose to Redi-
rect Foreign Policy,” International Studies Quarterly 34 (1990): 3–21.
73. Ibid., p. 5.
74. Domestic and industrial water supply has never played a significant role in
terms of volumes extracted from the rivers.
75. In May 2012, ETIC convened the “International Conference on Advancing
Cooperation in the Euphrates-Tigris Region” in Istanbul, together with Turkey’s
Okan University and Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law
and International Law. The conference brought together regional and international
scholars and the riparian bureaucracies (water technocrats) who have shown their
willingness to preserve and develop relations, which was encouraged by the politi-
cal will that was initially shown. They in fact perceived water as a technical and vital
issue and as a medium of cooperation, a uniting rather than a dividing factor at a time
of political difficulties.
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Evolution of Transboundary Politics in the Euphrates-

Article in Global Governance · April 2013

Aysegül Kibaroglu Waltina Scheumann

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Evolution of Transboundary Politics

Aysegul Kibaroglu and Waltina Scheumann

Transboundary water politics in the Euphrates-Tigris river system have

THE MAIN RIPARIAN STATES OF THE EUPHRATES-TIGRIS RIVER SYSTEM ARE

Rivers of Common Geography and History

At transboundary level, harmonious water relations reigned in the basin

ings. The principles of equitable and reasonable utilization, of the optimum

Rivers for Cooperative Endeavors

In 1998, Turkish-Syrian relations became tense when Turkey threatened

High-Level Strategic Cooperation Councils and Water

boundary water development and management initiatives in the Euphrates,

agreement and make implementation more manageable. Multiresource link-

New Water Protocols and

The Water Protocol Between Turkey and Iraq

ronment and Forestry (MoEF), the government departments responsible for

The Orontes: From a Bone of Contention

Syria’s Emerging Need for Water from the Tigris

Issues of Common Concern: Protocols on Water Efficiency,

The Ministers’ Network and the JTC Revitalized

pletely abandoned, should be resumed. Thus, a series of JTC meetings have

The Euphrates-Tigris Initiative for Cooperation:

In such a context, the array of perspectives and issues should include,

resentatives of civil society organizations and business circles as well as the

Euphrates River and Southeast Anatolia Development Project (Carbondale: Southern

52. The Memorandum of Understanding Between the Government of the Repub-

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