History, Identity and Water Disputes: The Case of the Tigris-Euphrates

CIAO DATE: 6/99

History, Identity and Water Disputes: The Case of the Tigris-Euphrates _*

International Studies Association
40th Annual Convention
Washington, D.C.
February 16–20, 1999

I. Introduction.

The Tigris-Euphrates basin was the birthplace of Western Civilization. Basic and fundamental cornerstones of Western life, such as the rule of law, mathematics, astronomy and many aspects of merchant and industrial life were either created or discovered there. Being the most important and largest part of the fertile crescent, it was the site of many mighty empires and kingdoms. It was also one of the first regions of the world to experience centralized authority with the rise of the Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian, Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian empires. With the fall of Babylon to Cyrus the Great, the region’s polities whether imperial or local lost their independence. From time to time, a local regional dynasty would assert the independence of territories within the basin or in the adjoining parts of the fertile crescent. These dynasties include the Hasmonean (Maccabbee) dynasty in Israel, the Hamdanids in Northern Syria and Iraq, and others. On occasion, after the collapse of one empire or another, a bevy of small states emerged and lasted a few decades or centuries before being absorbed new empires. Nevertheless, it is safe to say that the basin lost its independence and became a prize of various competing empires based on the Iranian and Anatolian plateaus. Sometimes, the polity that controlled the region did not directly border it as was the case with Rome and the earliest Muslim Arab conquerors.

Conflict between sovereignties in the Basin is therefore a new phenomena, because territorial political plurality did not exist there for many centuries. It is tempting to attribute conflict to rational causes such as resource shortages and territoriality. For example, disputes over water are said to cause war in the Middle East. But appears to be a conflict caused by a dispute over water turns out to be a conflict more likely caused by a clash of national identities. The disputes over water feed and exacerbate pre-existing conflicts, but they do not cause them. The Tigris-Euphrates basin has witnessed many such conflicts in the recent past and undoubtedly, they have made problem-solving in the region very difficult.

World War I led to the creation of many states within the region, and understanding the origins and the history of the water disputes there is impossible without some reference to that conflict. It is also impossible to discuss the Tigris-Euphrates basin without talking about the two rivers’ natural hydrology and the human modifications of basin. The various states’ water development programs are discussed along with assessments of their outcomes. Generally speaking, Iraq’s, and to some extent Syria’s, agricultural policies have been failures, albeit at varying rates and for different reasons. The region will need increased food supplies and its projected political needs are becoming more urgent as population growth forces Iran to begin using its water contribution to the Basin. For example, the Basin lacks a regime to ameliorate conflicts. These conflicts are directly linked to clashes of national identities. Primarily, most conflicts in the region stem from the lack of a Kurdish state and from the clash of Arab and Turkish perspectives. Given the enormity of these deep problems, a role for the United States is both necessary and vital. The United States is the only power that can promote a measure of unity in the basin.

II. The Origins of the Water Disputes.

For most of the previous two and half millennia, a measure of unity had settled on the Tigris and the Euphrates. This unity was the result of the control of the basin by Hellenistic, Iranic, Turkic and Arab empires. This unity continued, largely uninterrupted, until the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1918. The Ottoman Empire had controlled most of the Basin except for a small number of Tigris tributaries in Northern Iran as well as the Kharun River in Southern Iran. The collapse of the Ottoman Empire was, by any reasonable account, catastrophic, because no final settlements resulted from it. In the largest and most important area of the Ottoman empire, a republic emerged based on Turkish national identity. The Arab portions of the Ottoman Empire fell to British and French mandates, and became even more attached to their Arab and regional identities partially as a result of the presence of the British and the French. The French and the British did not leave the region, in a real sense, until the end of World War II. With the Arabs’ de facto postwar independence, the basin found itself divided into large territorial and perhaps permanent states for the first time since the Neo-Babylonians.

The old empires had provided common systems for arbitration of water disputes. These systems were based on Byzantine, Hellenistic, Iranic or Islamic legal traditions and they functioned in a manner that imposed a common regime upon the inhabitants of the basin. In short, they provided for equal justice or injustice for all. With the newly independent post-Ottoman Arab states and new Republican Kemalist Turkey, the situation was reversed. The basin and its inhabitants were no longer under the common rule of Islamic jurisprudence or even the Porte’s arbitration. As the populations of Syria and Iraq increased, the two states sought to use as much of the Basin’s water as possible. When Turkey found itself forced to deal with ethnic and national pluralism within its borders, it reached to the Euphrates to bind its unhappy Kurdish minority to the rest of the country by economic means. For Turkey this meant building the Southeast Anatolia Project (GAP in its Turkish acronym) — a series of dams in Turkey’s Tigris-Euphrates basin.

As a result, water disputes arose among the three states. The sharpest conflict in the Basin is between Turkey and Syria. On the face of it, it appears as if the Turkish-Syrian conflict is caused by the dispute over the waters of the Euphrates. Syria’s behavior suggests that there is a link. For example, when meeting Turkish officials, Syrian diplomats deny that they are supplying the Kurdish Labor Party (PKK — Kurdish Labor Party) with weapons and then immediately bring up the GAP and the issue of water supplies to Syria. Nevertheless, a closer examination of the relationship reveals that the dispute over Euphrates waters is not a cause but a source of exacerbation of the conflict between the two states. Hydrology teaches us that upstream storage in a mountainous area like Turkey is, ceteris paribus, better than other locations for damming rivers. The losses due to evaporation and seepage are often low upstream and the potential for generating hydroelectric power is higher upstream. Upstream storage also allows for predictable deliveries of water downstream and reduces the risks of flood and drought for all the inhabitants of a river basin include people downstream. Turkey did release waters during a drought in the seventies to aid Syria and Iraq. In addition, many other countries, as diverse as Paraguay and Austria, are more dependent on waters originating outside their borders than Syria. Nevertheless, these countries generally cooperate with their neighbors over water issues. These realities suggest that non-cooperation and conflict between Syria and Turkey are perhaps due to historical and national identity factors that stem from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and not disputes over Euphrates water. Disputes over the waters of the Euphrates have also been listed as a cause of the conflict between Syria and Iraq. These explanations usually disregard the historical animosities and hostilities between the two Arab states that stem from religious, ideological and personality differences.

These sorts of differences were a major factor in the Iran-Iraq war. Iran, a major contributor of water to the system, has not yet developed its portions of the Basin. Until recently, Iran has had an ample supply of water and has not yet felt a need to develop its share of the basin. As a result, Iran has not generally been a disputant for water resources. Its dispute with Iraq over the Shatt al-Arab waterway was primarily a dispute over the location of the border and navigation rights rather than a dispute over the right to use these waters in a consumptive way in agriculture or in cities.

Much of the region’s instability stems from the lack of a Kurdish state and the Kurds’ desire to be left alone if not allowed to be free. The only major conflict with a clear nexus to water, the confrontation between Syria and Turkey, is really about historic mistrust and a clash of identities. This clash is fed by the view of the Arabs as an “other” in Turkey and the inevitable demonization of Turkey and Turks in Syria in the aftermath of World War I.

Turkey is attempting to solve the Kurdish problem, by economically integrating the Kurds into Turkey through the GAP program. The policy also has a non-coincidental side-effect of depriving Syria of water. Turkey’s motives in both instances are intimately tied with its nationalities policy. Turkey has precluded any attempts to divide the water on the basis that “it is Turkish water.” The country’s refusal to negotiate with Syria is rooted in its rejection of the outcome of World War I, especially with regard to the Arab role in that war. The Turks’ attitudes toward Arabs are so profoundly negative that cooperation is very unlikely. Furthermore, Syria was left with no choice other than using the Kurds against Turkey in order to induce cooperative behavior in Ankara. So, it cannot negotiate with Turkey in good faith. Faith, in the sense of religion and political ideology, drives Syria’s relations with Iraq.

There is very little cooperation in the Tigris-Euphrates basin. The Tigris-Euphrates basin is reminiscent of the Islamic portrayal of the al-Jahiliya — the Hobbesian state of nature that existed in the Arabian peninsula before Islam. More than a million of people have died in wars in the basin since 1918, and there is no sign that the chaos is going to end soon.

III. The Natural Hydrology and the Human Modifications of the Tigris-Euphrates Basin.

Without the Tigris, the Euphrates and their tributaries, life in the basin would be inhospitably ecologically as well as politically. Turkey contributes the vast majority of the Euphrates’ water. Only 1.7-2.00 cubic kilometers out of the Euphrates’ annual discharge 26.5-28.5 cubic kilometers originate outside Turkey; for comparison, it is useful to remember that the Hoover Dam’s reservoir hold 33-34 cubic kilometers of water. The Tigris discharges some 47.7-51.4 cubic kilometers of water every year. Some 28-31.5 cubic kilometers of the Tigris’ annual discharge originate in Turkey. Turkey contributes some 70 percent of the water in the Tigris-Euphrates basin. Iran contributes 9.7-11.2 cubic kilometers a year to the Tigris River through its tributaries in the North. It also contributes 20-24.8 cubic kilometers of water to the Shatt al-Arab waterway, which unites the Tigris and the Euphrates, through the Kharun River. Iran is second only to Turkey with water contributions into the system with some 21 percent of all water. Like Syria, Iraq contributes a small amount of water. Iraq contributes no water to the Euphrates and some 2.8-6.8 cubic kilometers of water to the Tigris system. ₁ The two Arab states share a contribution amounting to no more than 9 percent of all the water in the system, with most of the water being contributed by Iraq. Nevertheless, they sit on territories that invented dam and canal construction.

The Tigris-Euphrates basin has seen dams and major hydraulic systems from ancient times. The Nahrawan canal was built in the 6th century AD, and it was used to transport water from the Tigris to the Diyalah river for agriculture. The canal was 300 kilometers long and about 30 meters wide. The Nimrod dam, a 10-meter high ancient marvel, diverted the water for the canal. The ancient canal was destroyed by the Mongol in the 12th century; it was not the first time that water or thirst had been used as a weapon in the region. King Nebuchnezzar used the canal system to defend Babylon, and Assyrians used floods as early but effective weapon of mass destruction. The catastrophic end of the Nahrawan canal symbolized the decline of agriculture in Mesopotamia. The Mongol conquest represented the failure of the local Islamic regimes in the Tigris-Euphrates to defend the territories and to raise the necessary revenue for maintaining armies and the canal system. The ostentatious life of the Abbasid Khalifas, such as Harun el-Rashid, helped devastate their progeny as well as their immediate successors — Iranic and Turkic dynasties such as the Buwayhids and the Kara-Quoyunlu. Modern Iraq has been able to use two ancient water projects, Lake Abu Dibbis and the Habbaniya barrage, to store water. These two projects have a combined capacity of storing some 46 cubic kilometers of water. ₂

The first major modern project in the Basin began in 1960 and was completed in 1974 in Turkey. This was a major dam designed to provide electricity for Istanbul and Ankara, the dam was built near the Turkish city of Keban on the Euphrates and was called the Upper Keban dam. It holds 30 cubic kilometers of water. For comparison, it is useful to remember that the Hoover dam in the United States holds 35 cubic kilometers of water. Despite some initial difficulties, the dam proved a success and was useful both in mitigating electrical shortages in Turkey and assisting Syria and Iraq during droughts. The Upper Keban is not considered part of the GAP program. Two GAP dams have already been completed on the Euphrates. The Karakaya dam stores some 9.5 cubic kilometers of water. The Ataturk dam stores some 48 cubic kilometers of water and is associated with water tunnel and canal works that are “the largest in the world.” Four additional dams on the Euphrates are still pending and are in various stages of completion. Turkey’s GAP projects on the Tigris are more modest. In 1991, there were eight major dams pending there, but they were not being planned for water storage. They are primarily hydroelectric plants that do not affect the flow of water to Iraq and allow Turkey to purchase Iraq’s cooperation against Syria. Iraq’s water policies are compatible to some extent with Turkey’s. Since the project needed Syria’s consent to acquire international funding, Turkey could not borrow the money from the IMF or World Bank. It resorted to unconventional means of financing the project with the quiet support and subsidy of various western governments. Eventually there will be 22 Turkish dams in the Tigris-Euphrates basin. ₃

With Turkish water policy designed without consultation with Syria, the weaker country turned to the PKK as an instrument with which it can win concessions from Turkey. Syria is heavily dependent on the Euphrates. It has two dams on the river and a third one is pending. Syria’s largest dam is called Al-Thawra (The Revolution). It holds some 11-12 cubic kilometers of water. Unlike Turkey’s well designed and efficient dams, it wastes some 1.6 cubic kilometers of water a year. Some of its planned irrigated lands could not be irrigated and gypsum deposits have damaged the dam’s associated canal system. A second Syrian dam on the Euphrates holds about one cubic kilometer of water. A third dam is being planned near Aleppo with a storage capacity of 1.88 cubic kilometers. With the assistance of the British firm of Sir Alexander Gibb and company, Syria is planning three additional small dams with storage capacities beneath one cubic kilometer each. Like Turkey, Syria did not consult its neighbors when it built its modest capacity. It had a water dispute with Iraq during the 1970s which was resolved with Soviet and Saudi mediation. The dispute was associated with the Al-Thawra dam and seems to have been largely resolved. ₄

Iraq’s water development programs seem to have suffered from the country’s recent history. While blessed with the heritage of an ancient storage capacity equal to the Ataturk dam, the country has relied mainly on barrages rather than true dams. The first of these barrages was built during Ottoman rule and the latest was completed in 1985. These barrages are used to divert water from rivers into canal systems and to move water from the Tigris into the Euphrates. Lake Thathar was reworked in 1950 to hold some 30 cubic kilometers of water. It links the Tigris and the Euphrates. Iraq uses the lake to compensate for its shortages in the Euphrates with Tigris water. This is precisely what Turkey wants Iraq to do. Iraq’s dam program is model in comparison to its storage and barrage program. The Saddam dam in Mosul is operational and holds some 10.7 cubic kilometers of water. Other dams on the Tigris and its tributaries exist. Some of Iraq’s dams are incomplete. Iraq’s agriculture is shattered and the country produced less food in 1977 than it did in 1960. It attempted to compensate for its water shortage by importing food, but the sanctions have shown this to be a bad option. The collapse of Iraqi agriculture is in no small measure due to the increasing levels of salinity. As early as 1960, lower Iraq had about one billion tons of salt deposited in its soil. The salt decreases agricultural yields by some 30-50 percent. This is a problem that requires a serious national effort to solve, but successive Iraqi regimes have chosen not to commit the resources required to solve it. ₅

IV. Current Trends and the Projected Needs of the Future.

The problems facing Syria and Iraq require immediate solutions because of the rapid growth of the Iranian population. Thus far, Iran has ignored its vast contribution to the water balance in the Tigris-Euphrates basin, because it had alternative water resources. This allowed Iraq to use the Iranian water contribution to substitute for the decreased supply of water from the Euphrates. But with populations growing all four basin states, and especially in Iran, the window of opportunity for creating an international regime in the basin is gradually closing. By 2020, Iran is projected to have 104 million inhabitants, dwarfing every basin state including Turkey which is projected to have some 86 million people. The difference between the population of Turkey in 2020 and Iran represents the entire current population of Syria. ₆ Iran is also more than twice the size of Turkey in terms of landmass. The military and political implications of these facts are obvious.

The diplomatic implications of the probable rise of Iran suggest that the country cannot be excluded from a Tigris-Euphrates regime. Iran was excluded from the first attempt to set up a regional riparian regime in 1980. This regime was not very successful, and Syrian representatives refused to attend meetings with Turkish representatives if the Iraqis were present. The regime is not allocative and suffers from tremendous problems because Turkey sees the rivers are Turkish property and applies the Harmon doctrine; the Harmon doctrine was introduced by the United States to justify the unilateral development of the Colorado without Mexico’s consent. For Turkey, the regime is a consultative body and not an allocative one. Syria and Iraq see the regime’s future role as allocation rather than consultation. Material obtained from the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs clearly indicates that Turkey views the Tigris-Euphrates Permanent Joint Technical Commission as forum for discussing water issues. Furthermore, Turkey is adamant that it is sending clean water in adequate quantities to Syria and Iraq. The Syrian, and increasingly Iraqi, position has been that the Tigris-Euphrates Permanent Joint Technical Commission is an allocative body. In a joint Syrian-Iraqi meeting held in October 1997, the two countries invited Turkey to discuss water distribution with them. Turkey refused to attend. In addition to the Permanent Joint Technical Commission, there have been a number of Syrian-Turkish protocols guaranteeing Syria 500 cubic meters of water per second in return for terminating its support for the PKK. These protocols seem to have been honored only in their repetitive breach by both sides. ₇

V. Conflicts in the Basin.

Turkey’s difficulties with Iraq and Syria and have roots in feelings of betrayal dating to World War I. The lack of cooperation stems from Turkey’s image of itself and its view of the Arabs in general. Self-image and national identity have been shaped by the three major conflicts in the region. The first and most important conflict was the Arab Revolt. While the subject of the Arab Revolt’s cause is the topic of many academic disputes, it is clear that the Sharif Hussein revolted only after Jamal Pasha, the last major Ottoman governor of Syria, began hanging Arab leaders from Syria and Lebanon and instituted a deportation program for Syrian notables. Jamal Pasha’s behavior was not without precedent; his actions in Syria paralleled his treatment of his political opponents in Baghdad and Istanbul and the population programs he helped institute in Ottoman Armenia. Jamal also politicized Ottoman Syria’s food distribution program in a move that led to the death of 90 percent of the country’s cattle and the starvation of an unknown number of people. These events have become the formative act in Syria’s national saga. Jamal also bequeathed Syria the survivors of his program in Ottoman Armenia and the presence of the Armenians served as a reminder to Syrians about their potential future. ₈

Like the Syrians and other, many Kurds have been seeking independence. In Turkey, Kurdish parties have been banned and the use of Kurdish in the media has been severely curtailed as a matter of state policy. Increasingly Kurds have no legitimate political outlet. The state’s policy feeds PKK recruitment drives and keeps replenishing the ranks of the guerrillas. The recent, well-reported crackdown on non-PKK Kurdish moderates by Turkey in the wake of PKK founder Abdullah Ocalan’s flight to Italy reveals the approach the Turkish state has taken toward Kurdish life. Citing Turkish leaders like current prime minister Buluet Ecevit, Henri Barkey points out that the GAP itself was founded to assimilate the Kurds through economic means. The PKK’s insurgency continues and there seems to be no end in sight. A measure of the PKK’s salience would be the annual Turkish invasion of Northern Iraq in pursuit of an organization Turkey claims to defeat every year. ₉

Like Turkey, Iraq has had to cope with massive Kurdish revolts since its founding. During the sixties and seventies, Iraqi Kurds revolted under the leadership of Mulla Musa Barazani, the founder of the extant Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP). They accomplished their goal of autonomy in Iraq, despite Saddam Hussein’s attempt to end Iraqi Kurdistan’s autonomy in 1969. But Saddam and his former mentor Al-Bakr negotiated in bad faith and slowly stripped the Kurdish region of its autonomy until Operation Desert Storm revived the Kurdish revolt in Northern Iraq. The Northern Iraqi no-fly zone provides the Kurds with an additional measure of protection against Saddam Hussein, and their internal Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK)/KDP disputes have been bridged by the Clinton administration, at least for now. ₁₀ The Kurds of Iran have also revolted from time to time. The Iranian branch of the KDP has had less fortune than its Iraqi cousin. The Iranian Kurds did establish a temporary state with Soviet support in 1945-1947 in the Kurdish majority region of West Azerbaijan. The Kurdish Mahabad Republic collapsed under Iranian attacks that year. In Iran, the KDP is seeking autonomy, but Iran refuses to negotiate with it. The party also lost some of its leaders to the bullets of Iranian operatives and can be regarded as severely weakened. ₁₁ Iran allows broadcasts in Kurdish but does not allow education in standard Kurdish or any of its dialects. Syria’s policies toward the Kurds have been generally less severe and the country has been a supporter of the PKK. Syria has about one million Kurds and its policies have shifted from tolerance to repression depending upon the government in Damascus. The current regime is friendly toward the Kurds and views them as a non-threat. There has been no Kurdish revolt in Syria since 1918. ₁₂

Iraq, on the other hand, has experienced wars not only with the Kurds, but with its neighbors. Iran and Iraq fought an eight-year war. The causes of this war are best understood in terms of Iraq’s behavior. Iraq aimed to annex Iranian Khuzistan despite the clear preference of its population for remaining within Iran. Iraq used poison gas and other weapons of mass destruction against Iranian troops. Iraq portrayed the war as an Arab struggle against Persian hegemony. To Western ears, it even portrayed the war as a struggle against Islamic fundamentalism and extremism. In short, the war was caused by the greed and prejudice of those in power in Baghdad, and the historical record since Operation Desert Storm largely validates this assessment.

History also shows us that neither the Arab revolt nor the Iran-Iraq war contained any nexus to water disputes. The PKK’s own struggle against Turkey is not premised on Kurdish water rights. The KDP and the PUK in Iraq did not pick up arms to insure a fair share of Tigris or Euphrates waters for the Kurds. The only conflict with any linkage to water is the confrontation between Syria and Turkey over Syria’s support for the PKK. This issue, however, cannot be shown to link water disputes and conflict, because of issues of national identity within the two states.

VI. National Identities.

Turkey’s view of the Arabs remains infused with leftover perceptions from World War I. Describing mainstream opinion in her country, Meltem Müftüler, a leading Turkish International Relations scholar, argues that “the Arabs are perceived as traitors by the Turkish people” due to their role on the allied side during World War I. In addition, influential American analysts Graham Fuller, Ian Lesser, Paul Henze and J. F. Brown, explain the hostility between Turkey and the Arabs in more detail. They note that Turkey’s sense of national identity is tied to rejecting the Arabs. Among other things, they argue that Turkey attempts to distance itself from its Islamic heritage by distancing itself from the Arab world which was the source of its Islamic heritage. They argue that Turkey rejects Arabs, because some Arab states were aligned with the Soviet Union which the Turks regarded as their enemy. Finally, these analysts detect a general hostility in Turkish culture towards Arabs who are labeled “lazy” and “dirty.” ₁₃

Turkey’s secular leadership benefitted from the Cold War, because it used the conflict to justify hostility towards other Muslim states and an Ataturkist secular order at home. With the end of the Cold War, all of Turkey’s repressed traditionalism burst onto the scene in the form of the Islamic Welfare party. The Welfare party grew to become the largest party in Turkey, and its leader, Necemettin Erbakan, became Prime Minister on 28 June 1996. The army moved against the Welfare party and forced Erbakan from power on 11 June 1997. Erbakan was attempting to normalize relations with the Arab world and to allow for more Islamic expression in Turkey. The army initiated a coup-by-memorandum to remove him from power. To complicate matters, some 25 percent of Turks follow an heterodox form of Islam called Alevi Islam. This variety of Islam that is called Alewi Islam in Syria and it is the faith of Syria’s Alawite elites. The secularists have made common cause with Alevis against traditional Sunni Turks, and Turkey is now divided along the lines of faith. ₁₄ A final complication in Turkey’s national identity is the fate of thousands of Turks who were caught behind enemy lines during World War I and butchered by various Arab and allied militias. The extent of these massacres is not clear, but it is clear that many Turks remember these events and distrust the Arabs all the more for them. For Turkey, or at least its secular leadership, the Arabs are the other.

The Syrians remember the past too. Aside from the grievances they feel with regard to the policies of Jamal Pasha, they also recall how Turkey blackmailed France into surrendering Syrian Alexanderetta in 1938-1939. They resent Turkey’s apparent alliance with Israel. Like Turkey, Syria is a multi-ethnic, multi-religious state. Sunnis are about 70 percent of the population. Christians number about 10 percent of the population. The remaining 20 percent includes the Alawites (Alewis) who number about 12 percent of the population. The Alawites have ruled Syria since the sixties and have put down Sunni Islamic fundamentalist revolts with brute force during 1980 and 1982. The Syrian leader, Hafiz al-Assad has attempted to minimize religious and ethnic differences at home by de-listing religious affiliation from identity papers and by referring to the people of Syria as “the descendants of the Ummayads.” He also uses Israel, Turkey and Iraq as “others” against whom Syrians can unite. ₁₅

For the Iraqi state, the other is its own people. Shiite Iraqis constitute some 55-65 percent of the population. Kurdish Sunnis number about 20 percent of the population. But the country’s leadership is drawn from the 13-15 percent of the population which is of Arab ethnicity and Sunni faith. Iraq contains every ethnic group found in Syria and a few purely local minorities as well. This group has provided the leadership of the country throughout from its founding until today. Unlike other segments of Arab society, the Iraqi Sunnis never saw Turkey as the other. The other in Iraq has been the Shi’ites, the Kurds, the Assyrians, the Iranians and the Iraqi Jewish community. In 1941, a pro-Nazi coup brought the British into the country. The defeated pro-German regime then engaged in the first massive pogrom in Arab history. Seven years later, the vast majority of Iraqi Jews departed under conditions that would more appropriately merit the word “expulsion.” The state’s leadership is derived from the local Sunni Arab Ottoman elites of the region. The men who established modern Iraq were Arab officers in the Ottoman army with Turkish military training. Many were not involved in the Arab revolt, although some were. Many of them had served King Faisal in Syria and again in Iraq. They were socialized by the hostility of the Lebanese and the Syrians and made the foreign policy of Iraq accordingly. The 1958 coup did not alter the pattern of a state at war with its population. In fact, all post-coup regimes, with the exception of the first one, drew support exclusively from the Sunni Arab community. As a result of this history, Iraq tends to tilt toward Turkey. The country makes policies compatible with those of Turkey even if the cost of their implementation is the loss of the Euphrates. ₁₆

Compared to Iraq, Syria and Turkey, Iran’s sense of national identity is very stable. Iran has had its share of political violence recently, but the recent problems reflect conflict over Iran’s policies rather than a conflict over the nation’s internal identity. The county’s two largest groups, Persians and Azeris, have both contributed to the leadership of the country. Aside from the Kurds and Bahais, Iran generally does not oppress its ethnic and religious minorities which are many despite the very large percentage of Shiites in the country. Khomeini condemned pan-Iranianism, pan-Arabism and pan-Turanianism. Khomeini’s regime also introduced the notion of language as being something distinct from the primary sense of belonging. For him, all that mattered was the religion of the people in question. He defined full membership in Iran’s national community on the basis of belonging to the Twelver Shiite faith regardless of ethnicity or language. This approach melded well with earlier fusions of Shiite Islam with Iranian nationalism and weakened the centrifugal forces that could have divided Iran. For example, Azeri speakers are called “Turkish-speaking Iranians,” the group is integrated into the leadership of the country and there are very high rates of intermarriage between Persians and Azeri-speaking Iranians. Finally, the use of the Azeri language is legal in Iran. Iran’s overall approach seems to work in terms preventing internal ethnic conflict. When Azerbaijan proper attempted to induce Azeri-speaking Northwestern Iran into union, it was politely given the cold shoulder by the local inhabitants. The Soviets had established a state in the province after World War II, but it collapsed after their withdrawal from Iran. In sharp contrast to Turkey’s nationalities policy, Iran’s policy is to live with the differences and emphasize commonality. The policy results in the erosion of the minority identities. In sharp contrast to Turkey’s approach, Iran emphasizes the commonalities that unite the Middle East in its foreign policy. ₁₇ Unfortunately, Iran’s second other, aside from the Iraqi regime, is the United States.

VII. A Role for the United States.

The United States is involved in a region that gave birth to its dominant civilization. The Tigris-Euphrates basin has regressed from the days when it was the central hub of Western civilization, because of scores of reasons that are outside the ambit of this effort. The involvement of the most powerful Western state in the affairs of area that gave birth to West is a remarkable historical event. Unfortunately, United States policy is guided without the appropriate consideration of national identity issues. Too often, the perspective of favored allies is used as a substitute for deeper engagement of the region’s problems, even when realist analysis is applied. Realpolitik can be a sensible way to conduct policy in the region, but it cannot ignore historical and identity factors. The case of the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates is an excellent example of the need to be historically sensitive and aware of the identity factors that play a crucial role in the conflict. Such an analysis would include a recognition of the need for remodeling the educational systems of the region, it would include increased personal and commercial contacts, and it must include a sincere recognition that the effort will be long and costly. Finally, a historically sensitive approach cannot establish preconditions for talks and negotiations with any of the region’s states except Iraq. Iraq is an exception because of it is a state that can be held together only by having its armed forces wage war against their own people. Without a historically-sensitive approach, United States policy will be seen as biased and illegitimate by most people there as are current United States policies in the Middle East.

XII. Conclusion.

Solving the problem of inter-communal conflict in the Middle East is not an easy task. The discipline of International Relations seeks to find rational reasons for conflict. More often than not, these rational reasons include a fair amount of what analysts only perceive to be the rational basis of conflict; these are concrete and real sources of dispute and conflict such as land, oil and water. While this approach is not without merit as the Iran-Iraq war showed, it disregards other important but less concrete causes of conflict such as national identity issues and historical animosities that need to be laid to rest and healed. The task facing the Tigris-Euphrates because nations, especially those with long histories of letters and civilization, do not and cannot forget easily. Were the water dispute between Turkey and Syria solved somehow, the two countries will continue to confront each other. It is highly unlikely that benefits postulated by functionalism would materialize. If the conflict between Syria and Turkey is solved at its root source, however, the water dispute and the status of the Euphrates can be permanently addressed with ease. The situation between Syria and Turkey is not a product of a mere water dispute; states can resolve water disputes with ease, if they could trust each other to a certain degree. The problem between Syria and Turkey needs to be resolved along the lines of national reconciliation and acceptance of the outcomes of World War I. Otherwise, the blood of history will always remain thicker than water and the region that gave rise to Western Civilization would remain splattered with blood.

Endnotes

*: Prepared for presentation at the 40th annual meeting of the International Studies Association, Washington, D.C., February 16–20, 1999. Back.

Note 1: Nurit Kliot, Water Resources and Conflict in the Middle East, (New York: Routledge, 1994), 112. Back.

Note 2: Peter Glieck, “Water and Conflict: Fresh Water Resources and International Security,” Global Dangers, Sean Lynn-Jones and Steven Miller editors, (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995), 92. Kliot, 116-117. Back.

Note 3: Thomas Naff and Ruth Matson, Water in the Middle East: Conflict or Cooperation (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1984), 93-95. John F. Kolars and William A. Mitchell, The Euphrates River and the Southeast Anatolia Development Project, (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1991), 9, 17, 35. The ARI Group (An Auxiliary of Turkey’s Motherland Party), GAP Project Investments, http://www.arigroup.org/english/projects/projectmain.html. Alan George, “Syria and Iraq Threaten Anti-European Action,” The Middle East, No. 255, April 1996, 21. Jon Barham, “Dam Developers Wear Down Bureaucrats Hostility to BOT,” Financial Times, 7 December 1995, 7. Back.

Note 4: Alan George, “Dam it, it’s our water,” The Middle East, No. 229, (December 1993), 32-33. Naff and Matson, 91-95. Kliot, 139. Back.

Note 5: Shahim Tekeli, “Turkey Seeks Reconciliation for the Water Issues Induced by the Southeastern Anatolia Project (GAP),” Water International, vol. 18, 1990, 215. Kliot, 121, 158-159. George C. Cressy, Crossroads, (Chicago: Lippincott, 1960), 147. Van R. Aart, “Drainage and Land Reclamation in the Lower Mesopotamian Plain,” Nature and Resources, vol. 10, No. 2, 1974, 11-17. Back.

Note 6: U.S. Department of Commerce as cited by The World Alamanc and Book of Facts 1997, (Mahwaj, NJ: World Almanac Books, 1996), 838-839. Back.

Note 7: Mariam Lowi, “Rivers of Conflict, Rivers of Peace,” Journal of International Affairs, vol. 49 No. 1, Summer 1995, 138. The Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, http://www.mfa.gov.tr/GRUPF/default.asp?Param=/grupf/water/facts.htm#six. Arabic News, (10 October 1997), http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/971023/1997102348.html. Back.

Note 8: Sulayman Mousa, T.E. Lawrence: An Arab View, Albert Boutros, translator, (London: Oxford University Press, 1966), 14. Hasan Kayali, Arabs and Young Turks: Ottomanism, Arabism, and Islamism in the Ottoman Empire — 1908-1918, (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997), 192-205. Back.

Note 9: Gerard Chaliand, The Kurdish Tragedy, (London: Zed Books), 20-21, 48-72. Nader Entessar, Kurdish Ethnonationalism, (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1992), 92-97. Henri J. Barkey, “Turkey’s Kurdish Dilemma,” Survival, vol. 35, No. 4, Winter 1993 , 56. Back.

Note 10: Michael Gunter, Mulla Musa Barzani and the Kurdish Rebellion in Iraq, (San Diego, CA: 36th Annual ISA Conference Paper, 1995). Back.

Note 11: Kurdish Democratic Pary — Iran, http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/51/055.html. Back.

Note 12: Chaliand, 84-88. Back.

Note 13: Meltem Müftüler, Turkey in the Middle East: In Search of a New Role, (Chicago: ISA Conference Paper, 1995), 6. Philip Robins, Turkey and the Middle East, (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, Pinter Press, 1991), 19. Graham E. Fuller, Ian O. Lesser, Paul Henze and J. F. Brown, Turkey’s New Geopolitics: From the Balkans to Western China (Boulder, CO: Westivew Press, 1993), 50-51. Back.

Note 14: Robert Olson, “Syria-Turkey Relations Since the Gulf War: Kurds and Water,” Middle East Policy, vol. 5, No. 2, (May 1997), 183. The Economist, “Two Islams Clash,” vol. 347, No. 8054, 25 April 1998, 54-55. Back.

Note 15: Robert Kaplan, “Identity Crisis,” The Atlantic, vol. 271, No. 3, February 1993, 22-36. Itamar Rabinovitch, “Stability and change in Syria,” The Politics of Change in the Middle East, Robert B. Satloff, editor, (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993) 13-15. Back.

Note 16: For the origins of the Iraqi elite please see Eliezer Tauber, The Formation of Modern Syria and Iraq, (Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 1995), 324. On Iraq’s Turkophile orientation, please see Marion Farouk Sluglett and Peter Sluglett, Iraq Since 1958: From Revolution to Dictatorship (London: KPI, 1987), 5, 199-200; Abbas Kelidar, “A Quest for Identity,” Middle East Studies, vol. 33, No. 2, April 1997, 413-414. Back.

Note 17: Hooshang Amirahmadi and Nader Entessar, “ Iranian-Arab Relations in Transition,” Iran and the Arab World, Hooshang Amirahmadi and Nader Entessar, editors (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993), 2-4. Patricia Carley, A Conference Report: Turkey’s Role in the Middle East (Washington DC: United States Institute of Peace January 1995), 14-15. In that conference, Graham Fuller seemed to exhibit hope that Turkish speaking Iranians would try to join Azerbaijan. Shireen T. Hunter, “Iran and Syria: From Hostility to Limited Alliance,” Iran and the Arab World, Hooshang Amirahmadi and Nader Entessar, editors (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993), 198-216. Back.