Turkey is upstream on a couple of the Middle East’s most important rivers. This gives Turkey leverage. From Alexandra Marvar at thenation.com:
In times of conflict, war, and climate change, hydropower is state power.
The Ilisu Dam in Turkey is set to inundate Hasankeyf, a 12,000-year-old Kurdish heritage site with untold archaeological value. (Alexandra Marvar)
Since the early 2000s, a massive hydropower project in southeastern Turkey has been mired in controversy, moving forward in fits and starts. But as of this past July, construction is finally complete. As the dam and its reservoir become fully operational, the line between hydropower and state power will be washed away. This fall, the violence that followed a sudden, destabilizing withdrawal of US troops from nearby northern Syria captured the world’s attention as it cleared the path for Turkey’s military to dominate the Kurdish opposition.
Meanwhile, the water slowly rising behind the 442-foot-high, more-than-a-mile-wide wall of the Ilisu Dam across the Tigris River is a less overt sign of that same determination.
