written by Rabee Al-Hafidh printable version send your friend

Thursday, 9 July 2009

Turkey’s decision to increase the water flow of the Euphrates River has been long-awaited and much-expected by Iraqis. Many who live in the Euphrates River basin rely on its waters for drinking and agriculture; it is a matter of life and death for them. For Turkey however, it means much more than just a water issue.

The decision comes at a time of political chaos in the region and amid a disregard by all for the integrity and sovereignty of Iraq. The amount of water released by Turkey does not relate to any water-sharing agreements between Turkey and Iraq, which in reality have been disregarded for years. The decision can only be seen as a move by a regional power to offer Iraq a share of a vital resource based on a strategic estimate of Iraq’s worth, and the value of the goodwill of its southern neighbours in general.

Political forces in the Middle East that do not want to see Turkey assuming the strong regional role which it deserves were quick to open fire. The propaganda war began with the slogan that Turkey was “putting the peoples of the region at risk of thirst.” In reality, those political forces appreciated at an early stage the significance of the decision by Turkey to open up the Euphrates, and feared that might reinforce the gains which Turkey has made in recent years towards the Arab world.

The relationship between a regional power and its smaller neighbours is not one between one government and another, nor can it ever be based solely on short-term deals and treaties. Instead, that relationship is akin to an equation: on one side the sacrifices of the regional power and, on the other, gratitude by the peoples of that region. Operating in a fraught political atmosphere where many powers are competing for influence, Turkey cannot afford but to act in this way.

The Turkish parliament’s decision in 2003 not to allow US forces to invade Iraq from its territory is the biggest regional sacrifice by Turkey towards its region since the collapse of the Ottoman state. In immediate terms, the political and economic price that Turkey paid was exorbitant. In hindsight however, the medal of regional leadership which Turkey proudly wears today, the podium which Turkey finds itself standing on and the confident language with which it addresses the world and the region, was the direct result of that sacrifice in 2003.

That parliamentary decision enabled Turkey to wipe away the almost 100-year old regional stereotypical picture. Turkey became deeply engrained in the Arab mind, and forced the Arab nationalist ideological camp, it’s sworn opponents in the nineteenth century onwards, to re-think its approach to this state in view of the role that it can, and should play in saving the region societies from the rising tide of sectarianism and ethnic chauvinism which threaten their very fabric. By doing so, Turkey will have finally cast away the temporary shroud of isolation, and replaced it with the embracing cloak of regionalism.

That historic decision is no less significant than that of Sultan Abdulhamid II when he refused to exchange Palestine in return for the debts of the Ottoman state. That decision was immortalised in history; generations of Arabs and Muslims relate with deep gratitude that decision taken over hundred years ago.

Had Iraq been truly independent today and was politically stable and healthy, the Turkish people’s historic decision would have been rewarded with nothing less than quotas of free Iraqi oil, and the rest at preferential rates, mirroring the relationship that Azerbaijan has with its regional backer Turkey, and the relationship that Jordan had enjoyed with Iraq. In such a scenario, there would be no need for water-sharing quotas.