Last winter, the massive dams and reservoirs that supply water to Istanbul’s 15 million residents fell to critically low levels, sparking fears of shortages.
Late-arriving snow and rain ultimately gave Turkey’s largest city a reprieve.
However, water and climate experts say that the country’s water worries are far from over — and more dams are part of the problem.
“Instead of trying to reduce our water demand, or decrease the amount lost through broken pipes and leaks, we are just focused on creating more supply by building new dams,” said Akgun Ilhan, a water management expert at the Istanbul Policy Center.
Turkey has built more than 1,000 new dams over the past 18 years, with 90 more expected to be completed this year, the Turkish General Directorate of State Hydraulic Works said.
“These big hydraulic projects have a large impact on ecosystems and societies,” including by displacing communities and destroying forests and farmland, Ilhan said.
The agency’s data showed that available water in Turkey has been dropping steadily over the past two decades, from about 1,650m3 per person in 2000 to less than 1,350m3 last year.
The UN defines a country as water stressed if it falls below 1,700m3 per person and water scarce if it reaches 1,000m3.
Population growth, urbanization, climate change and — critics like Ilhan say — poor water management are straining Turkey’s water supplies.
As that happens, shared water has become an increasing source of political tension between Turkey and its downstream neighbors Iraq and Syria.
“There is no difference between protecting our water and protecting our homeland,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said at a ceremony inaugurating a new parliamentary water council in March.
At the event, Erdogan promised 5.2 billion lira (US$623 million) in water investments, including new dams, water-treatment plants and improved irrigation.
Turkey’s agriculture — largely reliant on irrigation from dams and groundwater — accounts for nearly 75 percent of the country’s annual water consumption, said Sara Marjani Zadeh, a regional water quality officer for the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
Water-saving drip and sprinkler irrigation are used on less than one-third of Turkey’s 6.7 million hectares of irrigated farmland, FAO data showed.
Efforts to get farmers to shift to water-saving — but also energy-demanding — irrigation methods have so far yielded “no major change,” said Gokhan Ozertan, an economics professor at Istanbul’s Bogazici University.
“Farmers don’t want to pay for the electricity and maintenance required, and because [farm] subsidies aren’t targeted — farmers just receive the money no matter what they are growing or how — there’s no incentive to switch,” Ozertan said.
The lack of inducements to conserve water has left many farmers growing unsustainably thirsty crops like sugar beet and cotton in dry areas even in the face of declining water availability, he said.
Turkey’s water troubles are likely to intensify as the effects of climate change increase in frequency and severity, Ilhan said.
“Turkey has been facing droughts every four or five years since the late 1980s, and climate projections show that precipitation levels will further diminish,” she said.
The Turkish government has repeatedly pledged to fight climate change, announcing in February a new 14-point strategy that includes boosting solar and wind power capacity, and reducing fossil fuel use in buildings by 25 percent by 2023.
However, climate events like drought and flooding are intensifying, and might cut yields of key Turkish export crops like hazelnuts, apricots and wheat by as much as 40 percent in the coming decades, Ozertan said.
Many farmers who struggle to make a living end up relocating to big cities like Istanbul, Ankara and the Aegean port city of Izmir, putting further pressure on water supplies there.
“This continuous growth in population obliges urban municipalities to keep finding new sources of water,” Ilhan said.
That often means more large infrastructure projects like dams and pipelines — and building these can require evacuating rural villages, often driving more urban migration.
“Then the water consumption level in cities rises, so we build more dams,” Ilhan said. “It’s an absolute vicious cycle.”
The growing municipality of Izmir is trying to break that cycle for residents of the city and surrounding areas.
The river basins that provide water to the city have become strained, in part by the growing production of water-intensive forage for cattle, said Guven Eken, an advisor to Izmir Mayor Tunc Soyer.
So the municipality has begun using targeted subsidies, buying guarantees and marketing support to encourage farmers to take up less water-intensive crops and growing methods, Eken said.
That includes focusing on more high-value foods like olives and goat’s cheese that were traditionally produced in the region and are better suited to its dry climate, as well as swapping to more efficient irrigation, he said.
With support, “we are already seeing producers shifting back to the original agricultural ways that they had abandoned because they weren’t making enough money,” Eken added.
Izmir officials are also shoring up infrastructure to reduce water waste in urban areas.
Nationwide, nearly half of Turkey’s drinking water is lost to leaks before it reaches the tap, according to a report published last year by the Water Policy Association, an Ankara-based non-governmental organization.
In March, Izmir hosted a summit for mayors and other officials from 22 cities led by Turkey’s political opposition, representing about 65 percent of the country’s population.
The mayors signed a manifesto pledging to better manage water, in line with some of the strategies Izmir is pursuing, and called on the central government to do the same.
“Finally, we heard the mayors say things that academics and activists have been talking about for years,” Ilhan said.
“The manifesto has no legal obligations, but it’s on the right track,” she said. “Even putting 10 percent of it into practice would make a great change.”
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