ANKARA, Turkey, Aug 7 (NNN-ANADOLU) – Turkey and Iraq agree to establish a water resource centre, in the Iraqi capital, Bagdad, to study and address water issues in the region, a move aimed at overcoming the longstanding dispute between the two countries.
Veysel Eroglu, Turkish special representative to Iraq, announced on July 25, that both countries have drafted an action plan to address water issues, amid scorching heat waves in the world affected by climate change.
Meanwhile, the more cautious Iraqi Water Resources Minister, Jamal Adili, said, both parties favour a solution, as water talks present a great opportunity to benefit both the Turks and Iraqis.
According to satellites that monitor the climate, the Tigris-Euphrates Basin, which is a trans-boundary basin, distributed between Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, is losing water faster than any other area in the world.
In the past months, Turkey launched an effort to help resolve the water problem of neighbouring Iraq, amid bilateral tensions over decreasing flow rates in the Tigris and Euphrates river system, whose water is shared by the two countries.
Experts, nevertheless, hailed the step taken by Ankara and Baghdad and their resolve to tackle the issue.
“This is a positive step in the right direction, also in line with long-standing cooperation over water development, since the 1946 Treaty of Good Neighbourly Relations between Iraq and Turkey,” Muserref Yetim, a Turkish scholar in the Programme in International Relations at New York University, said.
“The end of the Syrian war is a precondition that seems hard to achieve. In the long run, emergence of accountable and transparent governments at the Euphrates-Tigris Basin will facilitate sustainable and environmentally sound water resource management.”
As one of the most water-rich countries in the Mediterranean, Turkey, though, has been facing dramatically decreasing availability of water resources over the years, with a population of some 82 million, as well as, droughts and climate change.
Turkey is building eight dams on the tributaries of the Tigris, and 14 on the Euphrates tributaries, for its South-eastern Anatolia Project, which has incensed downstream countries.
Iraq says, after defeating the Daesh militant group in 2018, water is crucial in restoring peace and stability, as more than 80 percent of the nation’s water goes to agriculture, which provides a livelihood to more than a third of its population.
“Previous severe droughts did not cause wars. However, water issue could become entangled with ethnic, religious, oil conflicts and may serve as a pretext,” Yetim noted.
“The establishment of more inclusive political and economic institutions can create more resilient and open societies that can solve their problems peacefully and have capacities to withstand adverse shocks like water scarcity, droughts and associated problems with the climate changes,” Yetim concluded.– NNN-ANADOLU
