Iraq and Syria say Turkey's dam-building has resulted in a drastic reduction of the water flowing through their lands.īaghdad regularly asks Ankara to release more water to counter drought, but Turkey's ambassador to Iraq, Ali Riza Guney, ruffled feathers last July when he said, "water is largely wasted in Iraq". More recently, in 2019, the ancient town of Hasankeyf on the Tigris was submerged to make way for the massive Ilisu Dam. In 1990 it completed the huge Ataturk Dam on the Euphrates River, just 80 kilometres (50 miles) from Syria's border. Turkey launched the construction of a gigantic complex of dams and hydroelectric plants across the southeast in the 1980s. Long used to drilling for oil, war-scarred Iraq is now digging ever deeper for water as a frenzy of dam-building, mainly in Turkey, sucks water out of the region's two great rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates. Sudan and Egypt, however, see the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam as a threat to their water supplies - Egypt alone relies on the Nile for about 97 percent of its irrigation and drinking water.Įthiopia has insisted the dam will not disturb the flow of water and turned on the first turbine in February 2020. In 2011, Addis Ababa launched a $4.2 billion hydroelectric project on the river, which it sees as essential to lighting up rural Ethiopia. The waters of Africa's longest river, the Nile, are at the centre of a decade-long dispute between Ethiopia - where the Nile's biggest tributary, the Blue Nile, rises - and its downstream neighbours Sudan and Egypt. President Sisi reiterates call for GERD binding deal in meeting with BlinkenĪhead of a UN conference in New York on global access to water, AFP looks at five mega-projects with very different consequences, depending on whether you live upstream or downstream.
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