MESOPOTAMIA NEWS : Turkey manufacturing water crisis to pressure Damascus and Syria’s Kurds

By Paul Antonopoulos, independent geopolitical analyst – 20 May 2021

Turkey has reduced the flow of the Euphrates River from 500 m3 per second to less than 200 m3 per second. This will have a major consequence on Syria – a threat of drought with summer only around the corner. Ankara is effectively weaponizing water to pressure Damascus and Kurdish-held cities.

Syrians have noticed a major drop in the river’s level, almost a total of five meters in some places. Osama Khalaf, spokesman for the Raqqa municipal council, explained that “fishery is affected and the health consequences are starting to be felt. Desertification is progressing. This is a deliberate strategy on Turkey’s part.”

The 2,780-kilometer-long Euphrates River, where some of the earliest city-states and civilizations emerged from in the early Bronze Age, has its source in Turkey’s Anatolian basin. As a result, the Turkish government has a formidable weapon to pressure and weaken the Syrian State, as well as the Kurdish-led and U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

The long-term strategy of Turkey is to establish another geopolitical lever, besides the military, to use against its neighbors. Turkey in July 2020 cut off the supply of drinking water to the Syrian city of al-Hasakeh and has previously reduced the flow of the Euphrates, depriving thousands of Syrians of electricity and preventing them from irrigating their crops. Human Rights Watch then alerted international authorities on the humanitarian consequences of water shortages in the region. Given the Kurdish presence in eastern Syria, this flow reduction is anything but trivial.

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