Contested hydrosocial territories and disputed water ... · 2/14/2016 · different hydrosocial territories regarding this mega-hydraulic project currently under construction. Imaginaries,

Geoforum 71 (2016) 9–20

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Geoforum

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Contested hydrosocial territories and disputed water governance:Struggles and competing claims over the Ilisu Dam developmentin southeastern Turkey

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2016.02.0150016-7185/� 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

⇑ Corresponding author.E-mail addresses: [email protected] (L. Hommes), [email protected]

(R. Boelens), [email protected] (H. Maat).

Lena Hommes a,⇑, Rutgerd Boelens a,b,c, Harro Maat d

aWater Resources Management Group, Department Environmental Sciences, Wageningen University, P.O. Box 47, 6700 AA Wageningen, The NetherlandsbCEDLA (Centre for Latin American Research and Documentation), University of Amsterdam, Roetersstraat 33, 1018 WB Amsterdam, The NetherlandscDepartment Geography, Planning and International Development, University of Amsterdam, P.O. Box 15629, 1001 NC Amsterdam, The NetherlandsdKnowledge, Technology and Innovation Group, Department Social Sciences, Wageningen University, P.O. Box 8130, 6700 EW Wageningen, The Netherlands

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history:Received 3 July 2015Received in revised form 11 February 2016Accepted 14 February 2016

Keywords:Hydrosocial territoriesWater governanceGovernmentalityConflictsDamsTurkey

Dam development in southeastern Turkey is a highly-disputed issue, fanned by the Turkish–Kurdish con-flict, socio-environmental and historical–cultural concerns, and international geopolitical interests. Thispaper focuses on discussions around the Ilisu Dam and shows how different actor coalitions imaginedifferent hydrosocial territories regarding this mega-hydraulic project currently under construction.Imaginaries, counter-imaginaries and endeavours to materialize them go far beyond technical projects,portraying the dam to (re)configure the territory physically, ecologically, socio-economically, symboli-cally and discursively. The paper embeds competing hydro-territorial constructs and claims within ananalysis of governmentality and the multi-scalar and multi-issue politics of dam opponents.

� 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction – Turkish dam development, GAP and theKurdish question

Dam construction is a disputed issue worldwide, of high impor-tance for governments, local people and the environment (e.g.,Bijker, 2007; Boelens and Post Uiterweer, 2013; Kaika, 2006;Nixon, 2010; Swyngedouw, 2007). In Turkey, a country that hasexperienced enormous economic growth in recent years and playsa major regional role for both the Middle East and Europe, largedams have been planned and constructed across the country. Arecent, highly controversial scheme is the Southeastern AnatoliaProject (Güneydogu Anadolu Projesi, hereafter GAP) comprising 22dams and 19 hydroelectric power plants in the Euphrates andTigris river basins (see Fig. 1 for an overview of the spatial recon-figurations imagined by GAP planners). Besides producing electric-ity, the dams deliver irrigation water to 1.7 million hectares ofland, boosting agricultural production in the region (Yüksel,2010). Beyond the massive barrier creating a huge water reservoir,these dams branch out in large grids of power cables and canalstransforming landscapes, affecting communities in these areas,

and mobilizing protest movements. Opposing stakeholders pickthe scientific knowledge and technological capacity that supportstheir positions and meets their objectives. To explain the variouslinkages between state power, protest movements, the landscape,local people, science and technology, we engage with the conceptof hydrosocial territories (Boelens et al., 2016). The concept is usedto analyze the last dam of the GAP complex, currently under con-struction, the Ilisu Dam. The numbers, although contested, areimpressive. The Ilisu Dam is designed to store 343.8 Mm3 of water,under which approximately two hundred towns and villages willdisappear, affecting about 78,000 people, primarily Kurdish (seeFig. 2) (Ilisu Consortium, 2005; Ilhan, 2009; Ronayne, 2005).

Provisional plans for a dam on the Tigris River were formulatedin the 1950s but it took until 1982 to make a project design (Settonand Drillisch, 2006). It took fifteen more years to find funding andinvestors, leading to an international consortium of companies toconstruct the dam (Banktrack, 2015). In subsequent years, the con-sortium’s membership changed frequently, as companies with-drew under national and international protests. The constructionof the Ilisu Dam officially started in March 2007 and is, as of early2016, at an advanced stage (Ayboga, 2015). Although the dam isnearly finished, it is unclear what the hydrosocial territoriesopened up by the Ilisu Dam will look like.

Fig. 1. The GAP Project region, planned and existing dams (Eberlein et al., 2010:293).

Fig. 2. The Ilisu Dam Project and affected cities/municipalities, prepared by the Initiative to Keep Hasankeyf Alive (Eberlein et al., 2010:295).

10 L. Hommes et al. / Geoforum 71 (2016) 9–20

The GAP has a history of shifting objectives and realization,from the original focus (early 1980s) on hydroelectricity and irriga-tion, to an integrated regional development project. Additionalobjectives were formulated, for example replacing traditionalsocial structures with ‘‘modern organizations and institutions”(GAP, 2013b: Objectives of GAP), reducing infant and child mortal-ity, lowering fertility rates and creating permanent settlements fornomadic and semi-nomadic communities (GAP, 2013b). Accord-ingly, multiple social projects addressing, for example, women’sempowerment, education and entrepreneurship were plannedand partly implemented within GAP. The integrated developmentprogram aimed to narrow the socio-economic gap between Wes-tern and Eastern Turkey (Carkoglu and Eder, 2001). Althoughcouched in general development language, the ‘Kurdish question’is inescapable in this area: the decades-old and still ongoing strug-gle between the Turkish government and Kurds living withinTurkish national boundaries. Crucial issues involve recognition ofKurdish identity, language rights, equal status under law, and

greater autonomy for the southeastern provinces (e.g., Harris,2002; Warner, 2012). The GAP project, however, swamped issuesof ownership and dependency, sovereignty and subordination bythe socio-technical complexities of dam construction.

The regional context has led scholars to argue that GAP is amechanism for the Turkish government to gain control and legiti-macy in the southeastern regions in various ways (Carkoglu andEder, 2001; Harris, 2002; Morvaridi, 2004). In a narrative consider-ing the region’s low socio-economic development status as the rootcause of the ‘Kurdish problem’, GAP is depicted as a way to pacifythe region through economic development (Harris, 2008). Further-more, GAP implies increased presence of state organizations, legit-imizing state authority and thereby increasing local populations’dependence on state institutions (Özok-Gündogan, 2005; Harris,2002; Jongerden, 2010; Warner, 2008). Such greater dependenceon the Turkish state is expected to undermine the power of theKurdish guerrilla group PKK (Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PartiyaKarkerên Kurdistan)).

L. Hommes et al. / Geoforum 71 (2016) 9–20 11

The transnational dimension of the GAP project is anotherrelated source of its (geo)political importance and sensitivity(Bagis, 1997; Harris, 2002; Warner, 2008, 2012). The Ilisu Dam ison the Tigris River, 40 km north of the Turkish–Syrian border and90 km upstream from where the river enters Iraq. The three coun-tries’ national borders cut across the Kurdish region, providing acontext in which politics and water are deeply intertwined andTurkey, controlling regional water resources, wields strategicallyimportant power in negotiations with neighboring countries. In1987, for example, Turkey urged Syria to end PKK activities withinSyrian borders in return for guaranteeing an annual minimum flowof water (Jongerden, 2010).

Regional developments, in particular the escalating conflicts inSyria, Iraq and other neighboring countries, add to the politicaldynamics. Turkey’s upstream dam-building efforts fade into thebackground (Schwarzstein, 2014); negotiations about constructinghydraulic infrastructure in Turkey now have less priority for theIraqi and Syrian governments, and both lack geopolitical powerto forge an effective agreement with the Turkish government aboutEuphrates and Tigris water resources (Interview Dawood, 17February 2015). These rivers have gradually become ‘normalized’in international discourse as a ‘Turkish resource’ providing the gov-ernment with political leeway to materialize its hydrosocial terri-tory and control water flows (Harris and Alatout, 2010; Warneret al., 2014).

This paper presents results from a study using multiple datasources among which academic literature, project reports, pressreleases and other media sources, semi-structured interviews con-ducted throughout 2013, with follow-up literature research andkey informant interviews in 2014 and 2015. We developed aframework, derived from the emerging body of literature focusingon hydro-social territories, to analyze the intrinsically socio-natural and techno-political relationships underlying and consti-tuting the mega-hydraulic development of the Ilisu Dam. Thisapproach pays specific attention to governmentality (Foucault,1991, 2008). The Ilisu Dam, this paper argues, is not only an instru-ment for the Turkish government to govern water and to ‘governpeople through water’ but is also used by protest groups to createa counterforce and alternative plans (Boelens, 2014; Bridge andPerreault, 2009; Swyngedouw, 2009). The Ilisu Dam and the dis-cussions and struggles surrounding its hydrosocial patterning giveinsight into the multiplicity of actor coalitions involved and thediversity of regimes of representation (Escobar, 1995, 2006) andtechno-political interpretations (Callon, 1992; Swyngedouw,2007). The contested hydraulic configuration of the Ilisu Damman-ifests the divergent dam imaginaries (Boelens et al., 2016; Jasanoffand Kim, 2013; Kaika, 2006; Swyngedouw and Williams, 2016),linking socio-economic, cultural and political facets in particularways and showing the political nature of technology.

The conceptual notions of hydrosocial territoriality and govern-mentality will be discussed in the next section. The following sec-tions give a reconstruction of the Turkish government’s hydro-political imaginary, the coalitions of actors and the diversity ofregimes of representation around the Ilisu Dam. Next, the hydro-political imaginaries of dam-opposing coalitions are analyzed.The penultimate section examines perceptions and responses ofpeople living in dam-affected areas, and the final section discussesresults and draws conclusions.

2. Hydrosocial territories, governmentality and contestedtechno-political imaginaries

Similar to experiences in other countries, dam development insoutheastern Turkey is framed in a strongly de-politicizedlanguage of overall progress, sustainable, clean development and

efficient, rational water management (Birkenholtz, 2016; Duarte-Abadía et al., 2015; Kaika, 2006; Martínez-Alier et al., 2010;McCully, 1996; Sneddon and Fox, 2008). This disregards competingclaims and conflicts over water, landscape and hydropower devel-opment and assorted interrelated struggles over socio-culturalissues, problem definitions, knowledge frameworks, ontologicalmeanings, decision-making and preferred solutions. This arrayand ordering of issues is presented here as contested techno-political imaginaries, sustained by the notions of hydrosocial terri-toriality and governmentality. Viewing the Ilisu Dam in terms ofhydrosocial territories and governmentality can enhance ourunderstanding of how water control is embedded in the broader(multi-scale) political context of governance over and throughsocio-Natures.

The ‘‘hydrosocial territories” concept views water flows andmanagement as physical, social, political and symbolic matters,entwining these domains in particular configurations, actively con-structing and producing territoriality in techno-political and socio-ecological interactions (Boelens et al., 2016; Swyngedouw andWilliams, 2016). This means that territories are not just geograph-ical places but imagined spaces that model actively created places(cf. Agnew, 1994; Elden, 2010; Baletti, 2012). Imagined spaces andthe changing reality on the ground become a mixed zone, time-and location-specific, where rules about water management,decision-making, meanings and discourses are profoundly con-tested and negotiated. Rather than constituting separate entitiesthat ‘interact’, humans and nature influence and produce eachother in multiple ways and on multiple scales (Barnes andAlatout, 2012; Baviskar, 2007; Harris and Alatout, 2010; Jasanoffand Kim, 2013; Latour, 1994, 2000; Linton and Budds, 2014;Zwarteveen and Boelens, 2014). Boelens et al. (2016:2) conceptual-ize the hydrosocial territory notion as ‘‘the contested imaginaryand socio-environmental materialization of a spatially boundmulti-scalar network in which humans, water flows, ecologicalrelations, hydraulic infrastructure, financial means, legal-administrative arrangements and cultural institutions and prac-tices are interactively defined, aligned and mobilized through epis-temological belief systems, political hierarchies and naturalizingdiscourses”.

Accordingly, so-called ‘integrated’ or ‘hydraulic’ projects are infact means to configure and re-configure hydrosocial territories,altering the physical–ecological, socio-economic, cultural-symbolic and political spaces where they are realized. As a result,hydrosocial territories entail the impact of water flows through(mega)hydraulic artefacts with major effects for different usergroups’ physical and ecological environment, and also aim to mod-ify the political order, worldviews, and ways in which people ‘nat-urally’ represent themselves and others in relation to ‘Nature’, aswell as the ways in which these social–political norms, moralsand hydro-cultural relations become ‘embedded’ and ‘concretized’in hydraulics, artefacts and technological network relationships –i.e., the ‘moralization’ of (hydro-)territorial infrastructures(Anders, 1980; Foucault, 1975; Winner, 1986; Cf. Boelens, 2014;Dijk, 2000; Dixon and Whitehead, 2008; Verbeek, 2011).

Dominant hydrosocial configurations commonly entwine tech-nological, industrial, state-administrative, and scientific knowl-edge networks that enhance local–global commodity transfers,resource extraction, and development/conservation responding tonon-local economic and political interests. To do so, they com-monly curtail local sovereignty and create a political order thatmakes these local spaces comprehensible, exploitable and control-lable (see Büscher and Fletcher, 2014; Meehan and Moore, 2014;Rodriguez-de-Francisco and Boelens, 2016). Hydrosocial re-territorialisation, historically, has often been imposed top-down,explicitly manifesting the coercive forces of governments anddominant interest groups, for example by combining legal, military


and (extra-)economic compulsion, which Foucault (2008:313) calls‘‘government according to sovereign power”, or by constructingdominant mythical-religious representations, termed ‘‘governmentaccording to truth”. Modern forms of government rationality aim-ing to control subject populations apply more subtle techniques ofgovernance – such as moralizing-scientific ‘‘disciplinary govern-mentality” and market rationality-based ‘‘neoliberal governmen-tality” (Foucault, 2008: 313). They aim for ‘subjectification’ inwhich subjects come to adopt the dominant discourse and conse-quently turn themselves into self-disciplining, obedient citizensof the ruling system (Foucault, 1975, 1991; Cf. Dean, 1999;Escobar, 1995; Feindt and Oels, 2005).

In such moralized and moralizing techno-political geographies,ruling groups deploy, and subjugated groups gradually come toadopt, discourses that define and position social and materialissues in a human-material-natural network that leaves thepolitical order unchallenged and stabilizes ways of ‘conductingsubject populations’ conduct’ (Foucault, 1991). Thus, the effort isto simultaneously govern water-through-mentality andmentality-through-water, rather than water as such, and by thatto make people govern (‘correct’) themselves, in accordance withthe socio-natural, hydro-territorial imaginaries of the ruling (seeDuarte-Abadía and Boelens, 2016; Ioris, 2016; Melo Zurita et al.,2015; Perramond, 2016; Swyngedouw and Williams, 2016).Making such ‘new subjects’ requires these water users to frametheir worldviews, needs, strategies and relationships differently,building and believing in new models of agency, causality, identityand responsibility (for Turkish governmentalization, see also Secor,2007). Such frames also exclude other options and thus ‘‘delimitthe universe of further scientific inquiry, political discourse, andpossible policy options” (Jasanoff and Wynne, 1998:5).

As this mechanism of ‘‘capillary/inclusive power” in water pol-itics and natural resource governance is less visible but often extre-mely effective (Boelens, 2009:324; see also Bridge and Perreault,2009; Büscher and Fletcher, 2014; Ferguson and Gupta, 2002;Vos and Boelens, 2014), its disclosure has strong relevance. In theGAP project, governmentality is central as Turkish state authoritiesaim to use water resources to irrigate and generate electricity andto shape the project region’s socio-economic and cultural territoryaccording to a certain cultural–political imaginary. For example,presenting the GAP region as a place of agro-industrial potential,envisioning it as the Middle East’s ‘breadbasket’ and at the sametime emphasizing the region’s low HDI, suggests that making peo-ple and their territory part of Turkey’s broader neoliberal projectwill bring wealth and development. Thus, people’s perceptions ofwhat is morally ‘good’ and what ‘ought to be done’ (and whatnot) are formed to make them supporters of GAP – or at leastnon-opponents. At the same time, it adds to the project ofnation-building, actively producing subjects and citizens by alter-ing hydrosocial territory (cf. Jessop, 2007), suggesting that as wateris directed, channeled, piped and/or distributed it acts upon peopleand their relations (see Baviskar, 2007; Bijker, 2007; Ekers andLoftus, 2008; Meehan, 2013; Meehan and Moore, 2014; Mosse,2008; Perreault, 2014; Perreault et al., 2011).

As Rodriguez-de-Francisco and Boelens (2015, 2016) andSeemann (2016) demonstrate, territorial governmentality projectsdo not necessarily aim to obliterate alternative territorialities.Most often, as in the Turkish case (see also Harris, 2012; Secor,2007), modern territorialisation tactics aim to ‘recognize’, incorpo-rate and discipline local territorialities, integrating local norms,practices, and discourses into its mainstream government rational-ity and its spatial/political organization. This subtle strategy toincorporate and marginalize locally existing territorialities inmainstream territorial projects makes use of ‘managed’ or ‘neolib-eral multi-culturalism’ (Assies, 2010; Hale, 2004): through ‘inclu-sive’ strategies it recognizes the ‘convenient’ and sidelines

‘problematic’ water cultures and identities” (Boelens et al.,2016:7). Official and vernacular or customary water managementstrategies are deeply intertwined in a ‘shotgun marriage’(Boelens, 2009:315): State and customary modes of territorialordering depend on each other in complicated and often con-tentious ways. Unable to provide water for all societal sectors,the state relies on informal/illegal norms, infrastructures, and orga-nizations that do have the capacity to provide water to the people.Incorporating or tacitly recognizing vernacular hydrosocial territo-riality with its context-specific solutions then aims to guaranteethe state’s legitimacy and stability. Commonly, some local rules,rights and illegal infrastructures are institutionalized, at theexpense of most others and at the cost of intensifying repressionby more contentious, defiant, and disloyal norms and hydro-territorial institutions (Boelens, 2014).

As a consequence, in everyday political practice, despite effortsby ruling groups to make one discourse and one techno-politicalimaginary hegemonic, it is common to find multiple competingterritorial imaginaries and regimes of hydrosocial territorial repre-sentation dynamically taking shape within one and the same geo-graphical–political space (Hoogesteger et al., 2016). Particularterritorial imaginaries become contested and disputed bycounter-imaginaries attempting to establish a different frame ofmeanings, problems, solutions and possibilities. ‘‘All of these com-pete, superimpose, and foster their territorial projects tostrengthen their water control. These overlapping hydro-politicalprojects generate ‘territorial pluralism’ and continuously transformthe water arena’s hydraulic grid, cultural reference frames, eco-nomic base structures, and political relationships” (Boelens et al.,2016:8). Building and materializing counter-imaginaries can takeplace in different ways, depending on the strategies deployed.Struggles for alternative territoriality often involve building andengaging in new multi-scale networks, which link local communi-ties and territories with translocal actors, strategies and alliances(Boelens et al., 2015; Heynen and Swyngedouw, 2003;Hoogesteger et al., 2016; Marston, 2000; McCarthy, 2005;Swyngedouw, 2004; Swyngedouw and Williams, 2016). Alliancesmay form among actors who are not linked directly or materiallythrough water flows but connect by constructing territories andimaginaries on extended scales (Budds and Hinojosa, 2012;Warner, 2012). Constructing imaginaries may often be strategizedto reach desired goals, making their creation an instrument and/ora necessity for success rather than an evident course of action.

3. Opposing coalitions and diverging regimes of representation

3.1. The hydrosocial territory of Turkish state authorities

The Turkish Government’s determination to build the Ilisu Damhas been substantial from the start. Despite protests and difficul-ties to access financial resources from third parties, Veysel Eroglu, Minister of Forestry and Water Works, put it boldly: ‘‘we [theTurkish Government] do not need their money. We will constructthis dam at any cost” (Eroglu cited in Ilhan, 2012:5). The Ilisu Damwill complete the GAP project and is thus considered a nationalpriority. The forms of governmentality, ranging from capillary totop-down strategies and techniques, are largely sustained by a pos-itive, inclusive discourse portraying the dam as a ‘‘symbol ofnational pride” and a ‘‘vision of a ‘great’ Turkey” (Carkoglu andEder, 2001: 42 and 65).

The official narrative imagines numerous advantages the damwill bring for the Turkish nation, local people and even for neigh-boring countries. First and foremost, it emphasizes that the damwill help cover Turkey’s growing energy demand, decreasingdependence on energy imports (Ministry of Foreign Affairs,

Fig. 4. Resettlement side ‘‘New Hasankeyf” as seen in Google Maps, December2015.


2013). This justification is backed by an imaginary of energy asscarce and water as relatively abundant, so that hydropower devel-opment seems ‘logical’ action to take. Furthermore, it claims theIlisu Dam promotes local employment in construction, improvedlocal availability of electricity, and better infrastructure such asroads. All this will kick-start local economic development (IlisuConsortium, 2005). As Harris (2009) shows, given that southeast-ern Turkey was long ignored by public and private investment,many welcome state support for local economies. However, theGAP irrigation project discussed by Harris differs from the IlisuDam in this aspect of irrigation: many GAP dams are designed tofacilitate irrigation to turn the region into a ‘bread basket’, but thisaspect is largely missing from the Ilisu project, where the ‘water forenergy’ imaginary prevails.

This imaginary is embedded in a wider vision of Ilisu beingindispensable for national development. The fact that local benefitsare actually marginal confirms what Nixon (2010:62) observes:that in order to construct mega dams, local communities areunimagined, thus excluded or shoved to the background of abroader but ‘‘highly selective discourse of national development”.Such imaginaries of benefits and development, which assign localcommunities a sacrificial role for the greater common good, arecharacteristic for hydraulic mega projects (see, for other examples,Duarte-Abadía et al., 2015; Kaika, 2006; Nixon, 2010). The subtleimposition of the dam-building coalition’s particular perspectiveson the GAP and Ilisu hydrosocial territories constitute a politicsof truth, legitimizing certain water knowledge, practices andgovernance forms while discrediting others. They separate ‘legiti-mate’ forms of hydraulic knowledge, territorial rights and people’sorganization from ‘illegitimate’ forms (cf. Forsyth, 2003; Foucault,2007). As a result, production of hydro-territorial knowledge andtruths – and the ways these shape particular water artefacts, rules,rights and organizational structures – concentrates on aligninglocal villages and livelihoods with imagined multi-scale water-power hierarchies (Boelens, 2009, 2014).

Discussions and imaginaries concerning ‘civilization’ are essen-tial. In the Ilisu Project, the state is depicted as the centre of exper-tise versus traditional, backward local people, needingmodernization (Harris, 2008). The territorial governmentalizationproject will fundamentally alter local people’s identification withexisting community and socio-cultural organization, in order to

Fig. 3. Resettlement side ‘‘N

change how people belong and behave, according to new identitycategories and hierarchies. This vision becomes clear in one targetof the GAP Social Action Plan: ‘‘to enhance the presence and influ-ence of modern organizations and institutions in order to removethose traditional ones that impede development” (GAP website,2013: Objectives of GAP, Target 1). Likewise, GAP will bring ‘‘civi-lization back to Upper Mesopotamia” (GAP website, 2013: Historyof GAP). This vision is supported by demographic data portrayingsoutheastern provinces as lagging behind other provinces socio-economically (GAP, 2013c). Calling the area backward devalueslocal knowledge and opinions and creates an imaginary portrayingstate culture as ‘progress’ and ‘development’. In this discourse,people ‘who want development’ must also become civilians ofthe Turkish state, creating a self-disciplining mentality.

The above cultural policies materialize in plans to resettle pop-ulations in centralized villages (see Fig. 2 for an overview ofaffected villages and Figs. 3 and 4 for examples of what resettle-ment sites look like). Governmental design choices are embeddedin and justified by specific ideas about how ‘modern’ people shouldlive and how state services can be delivered, namely in central vil-lages. Dispersed rural settlements in the area are, by contrast, por-trayed as difficult to control and as possible breeding-ground for

ew Ilisu” (Nesim, 2012).


social unrest. This imagines the area’s re-patterning through phys-ical structures such as the dam and new houses and villages to re-configure the region’s socio-cultural and economic makeup.

Socio-cultural and territorial re-patterning through specificresettlement designs was not originally part of the Ilisu Dam pro-ject but was included later, when European banks and companiesgot involved and applied for export credit guarantees in theirrespective home countries. For their applications, project-planning authorities were urged to prepare environmental impactassessments and resettlement plans, which then forced Turkishauthorities to actually design resettlement sites such as ‘‘NewIlisu” and ‘‘New Hasankeyf”. Export credit agencies intended thisto reduce the dam’s negative local effects, but these documentsthen materialized government authorities’ views and hydrosocialimaginaries about the region, the local population, the dam projectand their future.

In the official narrative, however, resettlement plans merely‘scientifically’ and ‘objectively’ support the previous idea that localpeople long for and need drastic change, which the Ilisu Dam pro-ject can bring. For example, in 2005 the State Water Works (DSI)and the Ilisu Consortium, then comprising German, Austrian, Swissand Turkish investors, published a resettlement action plan withquotes local voices mostly in favor of the dam: ‘‘Yes, I really wantthe dam to be constructed”, ‘‘We have a terrible life here. In addi-tion to this, new jobs will be created. Why wouldn’t we want it?”or ‘‘Let them [the Turkish government] save us from here, so thatwe will have civilization” (DSI and Ilisu Consortium, 2005:44). Thisbuilts a certain ‘truth’ and on-the-ground ‘reality’ supporting thestate’s and consortium’s hydro-political imaginary, to help realizeand materialize it. This is not to say that these accounts areinvented. Geographer Leila Harris shows how many local popula-tion groups have high expectations for the region’s economic bet-terment through GAP (Harris, 2012). Building on hope,expectations and discursive inclusion engages local people in thenarrative about a better future. Dam opponents, however, contestand criticize the creation of such hope and expectations, arguingthat resettlement areas are unsuited for sustaining people’sagriculture-based livelihoods and that job creation will be mar-ginal, if at all (CounterCurrent, 2011; Interview Doga Dernegi,2013).

The above does not mean that the Turkish state is a hegemonicand homogenous power that simply desires to suppress or assim-ilate Kurdish populations through the project and specific resettle-ment designs. Rather, official state policies regarding the Kurdishissue have changed over time and have potentially moved awayfrom straightforward assimilation policies. Instead, the currentAKP Government embraces a multiculturalist discourse in whichethnic sub-identities are acknowledged and seen to be connectedunder an umbrella-like Turkish citizenship (Saracoglu, 2009). Suchcultural policies of recognition are reflected in Government plansstating, for example, that there are ‘‘people of different ethnic ori-gins in the region” (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2013: The IlisuDam) and that ‘‘local sub-culture elements may form a positivesynthesis with the national culture” (GAP website, 2013: Objec-tives of GAP). Such acknowledgement is, however, highly selective;establishing what is the national culture and what are sub-ethnicities: a governmentality expression that deeply reflects theabove-mentioned ‘managed multi-culturalism’ (see also Assies,2010; Boelens, 2009; Hale, 2010). Furthermore, though this quoteshows recognition of cultural and ethnic differences, relative num-bers of present ethnic groups are not addressed (in the five pro-vinces affected by the Ilisu Dam, ethnic Turks and Arab groupsare much smaller in size than the Kurds (Morvaridi, 2004)).Thereby, the Kurdish issue is left out of the dam imaginary, ignor-ing claims by scholars or anti-dam campaigners that the Ilisu Damis highly political because the area is mainly inhabited by Kurds

(see for example Bagıs, 1997; Harris, 2002; Jongerden, 2010;Ronayne, 2005). The project’s political character is neutralizedand instead portrayed as one-dimensional, generating energy anddevelopment. Excluding or including the dam’s Kurdish dimensionin discussions can include or exclude population groups and poten-tial dam opponents, as explained in the following section.

Another important aspect of Turkish state authorities’ hydroso-cial territory and imaginaries associates the project area withnotions of ‘insecurity’ and ‘threat’. This makes the Ilisu Dam partof a wider security imaginary and narrative that recurs throughoutTurkish politics (Warner, 2012). The dam is imagined as a means toensure Atatürk’s principle of ‘Peace at home, peace abroad’, refer-ring to both the Kurdish problem and Turkey’s relations with itsneighbors (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2013; GAP, 2013a) enhanc-ing the area’s security in several ways: socio-economic improve-ments in the GAP region are expected to eradicate part of PKK’ssupport (Harris, 2002); expanding infrastructure while construct-ing the dam will make the area more accessible to governmentadministration and military activity; and flooding the area woulddeprive PKK of important hide-outs (Jongerden, 2010). This couldalso be a reason why the Government chose to construct one hugedam instead of several smaller ones. However, the official designchoice argument is that it is economically more efficient and prof-itable to build one single big dam (Ilisu Consortium, 2005). Withinthis (in)secure territory, water is imagined as an ‘actant’ (Callon,1992; Latour, 1994) both as a border, aiding the Turkish state’sphysical integrity, and as a point of access for military activity.Reconfiguring territory, here in spatial terms, is therefore a wayof governing people through water and not just governing wateritself.

The security discourse is also reflected by officially framinganti-dam struggles as ‘separatist’ or ‘terrorist’ (Eberlein et al.,2010; Ronayne, 2005). The terrorism discourse, shaping the nor-mative divide between legitimate and illegitimate thinking andknowledge repertoires, runs throughout many other Turkish polit-ical discussions as well. Interestingly, people opposing the damfollow suit. For example, a resident cited in Ronayne (2005: 85)calls the authorities responsible for flooding Hasankeyf ‘‘terroristsof history.” Hence, the same vocabulary is used to contest theother’s imaginary, showing how different imaginaries within a sin-gle territory directly interact with each other.

3.2. The emergence of opposing coalitions and diverging regimes ofrepresentation

The Ilisu Dam project and the dominant hydro-political imagi-naries constructed around it by Turkish state authorities, triggerresponses and counter-forces from a wide array of stakeholders.Symbolic–discursive pluralisms and materialized territorial imagi-naries evolve through multiple socio-cultural, political and eco-nomic projects and projections within the dam’s territorialreconfiguration. This case has a particularly high diversity inregimes of representation mobilized by dam opponents, to chal-lenge technocratic discourses portraying the dam as an undisputednecessity for Turkey’s energy policies. The main opposing imagi-naries about hydrosocial territories are: Kurdish, environmentalistand international. This is not to say that, for example, all Kurdsview the dam in the same way, but rather to point out how differ-ent dam dimensions such as the ‘Kurdish dimension’ (arising fromthe project region’s ethnic makeup) involve Kurdish stakeholders.While maintaining their own thematic focus toward the IlisuDam, the different Kurdish, environmentalist and internationalgroups link up to form coalitions reinforcing their parallel (butnot identical) struggles.

As with Evren’s (2014) observation on the anti-dam campaignin Yusufeli, anti-Ilisu campaigns are highly dynamic, evolving,


rising and declining with time as different dam dimensions areemphasized at different times, involving a variety of coalitionsand concomitant imaginaries in the struggles. Each constructedimaginary justified actors’ involvement in the struggle andaddressed different audiences.

3.2.1. Kurdish hydrosocial territoryThe earliest opposition against the Ilisu Dam came, in the 1990s

from Kurdish activists, academics and diaspora devoted to overallprotection of Kurdish rights in the region, e.g., the UK-based Kur-dish Human Rights Project (KHRP, 1999). Most dam-affected peo-ple are Kurds, so flooding the area is by some interpreted asdeliberately erasing part of Kurdish history and culture (Ayboga,2009): ‘‘Here is being drowned Kurds’ equivalent of nationalarchives, national museum, and national library, not to mentiontheir single most important deed to their native land” (Izady,1996: 12). This image shows the enormous physical and symbolicpower attributed to the dam and its water, to de-link the presentfrom the past by re-configuring the environment and considerablyaltering people’s relationship to their territory, history and culturalbackground. Such a break with the past, ‘erasing’ the existingsocio-environment to generate space for new, ‘pure and unspoiled’territorial configurations, is part of wider utopia-inspired hydroso-cial traditions (Achterhuis et al., 2010; Boelens and Post Uiterweer,2013; Kaika, 2006). This, together with forced displacements andmajor conflicts in the 1960s and 1980s, makes this struggle evenmore essential for Kurdish rights groups. More than just hydraulicinfrastructure, the dam is hydrosocial territory in which the Turk-ish state once again exerts physical, political, symbolic and discur-sive power over the dominated Kurdish regions.

However, claims about the area being inherently Kurdish arechallenged by the Turkish government, and altered by somedam-opposing organizations. Turkish authorities have not yetacknowledged any specifically Kurdish cultural claims to Hasan-keyf or the Ilisu project area but emphasize that different civiliza-tions have lived in the Tigris Valley in the past (GAP, 2013a).Second, Turkish environmental organizations stress the area’simportance for the whole Muslim world rather than only for theKurds because an important imam’s tomb is there (InterviewDoga Dernegi, 2013; Ronayne, 2005). Other international organiza-tions, such as the Damocracy Movement, argue that Hasankeyf andthe Tigris Valley hold value for the global community because ofthe ecosystem and archaeological sites documenting early humancivilizations (e.g., Ahunbay and Balkiz, 2009; CounterCurrent, n.d.; Shoup, 2006). Their claims do not contradict each other, butemphasize different dimensions and characteristics of the dam’shydrosocial territory, to reach a broader audience. Eberlein et al.(2010) confirm that Turkish and international celebrities (in thecampaign from 2007 onwards) re-framed the dam project,de-emphasizing ‘Kurdish’ dam dimensions to get Turkish societyas a whole involved. This move was tactically necessary since partsof Turkish society now recognize Kurds but exclude them fromtheir conceptions of society (Saracoglu, 2009). Imaginaries are thusstrategically constructed and instrumentalized so that respectiveconstituencies can feel part of the hydrosocial territory andbecome involved.

Finally, rather than focusing on positivistic factual truth aboutthe area’s historical relevance for different communities and cul-tures, it is fundamental to acknowledge that perceiving the areaas Kurdish involves Kurdish stakeholders in the hydrosocial terri-tory debate. Confronted with the threat of the Ilisu Dam, parts ofthe Kurdish community, although physically distant, feel strongbelonging to the area and thus engage in anti-dam protests.Harris (2008) argued that state practices to unify and nationalizeTurkish territory might encourage and reinforce Kurdish identity-formation. An apparent example of border-crossing Kurdish

involvement in hydrosocial identity construction is the above-mentioned Kurdish Human Rights Project (KHRP) (KurdishHuman Rights Project, 2009), defining the Ilisu Dam hydrosocialterritory in terms of Kurdishness, justifying their involvement ongrounds of territory and ethnicity. The Kurdish diaspora in theUS and Western Europe also became involved, playing a crucialrole in advancing scalar policies by setting up key alliancesbetween local and global NGOs and raising awareness about theproject globally (Ilhan, 2009).

3.2.2. Environmentalist hydrosocial territoryFollowing advocacy work by Kurdish human rights groups, an

environmentalist perspective enlarged the Ilisu project hydrosocialterritory, focusing the dam’s potential impacts essentially, thoughnot exclusively, on negative environmental impacts. Destructionof 400 km of ecosystem, loss of endangered species, deterioratingwater quality and increasing risks of diseases such as typhus andmalaria are just a few named by different organizations (e.g.,CounterCurrent, n.d.; Berne Declaration, 2001; Ahunbay andBalkiz, 2009; ECA Watch, 2009).

Many environmental organizations have included the Ilisu Damin their broader campaigns: for example the DamocracyMovementtook the Ilisu Dam into their political and symbolic–discursivestruggle to challenge labeling of hydropower as ‘‘green” energy. Arepresentative of Doga Dernegi, one of the member organizations,explained that they chose two representative dams for their cam-paign: the Ilisu Dam and the Belo Monte Dam in the Brazilian Ama-zon (Interview Doga Dernegi, 2013), illustrating how anorganization embeds local struggles globally. Time wise, it is inter-esting that Doga Dernegi, Bird Life International’s Turkish partner,joined the anti-dam struggle only in 2007, the year that the ECAs ofGermany, Austria and Switzerland approved the project in princi-ple. Considering that the anti-Ilisu struggle started in the 1990s,2007 seems rather late. Thus, the dam’s environmental dimensionwas incorporated into struggles and alternative hydrosocial terri-tory imaginaries much later than the Kurdish dimension.

Similarly, as ecological conditions got environmentalistsinvolved, the dam-affected area’s many archaeological sitesinvolved archaeologists. In 2005, a fact-finding mission by the Kur-dish Human Rights Project with Irish archaeologists clearly took aposition against the dam (Ronayne, 2005). The archaeologists wereinvolved by an earlier complaint against then of the dam at the2001 World Archaeological Forum as ‘‘a form of ethnic cleansingin which governments and companies would have been complicit”(World Archaeological Forum, 2001:1). A clear politicization ofarchaeology indicates how science engages in politics and how dis-cussions about technologies and their impacts are argumentativeprocesses rather than simply ‘truthful scientific facts’. This alsoillustrates how the struggle for a certain hydrosocial territory (topreserve the place’s specific ecological and cultural richness) andagainst the configuration suggested by the government can con-nect actors with each other and to infrastructure, place and theTigris River in networks that would not have emerged withoutthe common struggle.

To counter the claim of losing valuable archaeology, the Turkishgovernment claims that dam plans have in fact led to state-sponsored salvage excavations which would otherwise not havehappened (Ministry of Culture and Tourism, 2013). Respondingto critics, they maintain that many archaeological sites can besaved and rebuilt in the ‘New Hasankeyf Open-Air Cultural Park’giving a place for archaeology (albeit relocated) in the newhydrosocial territory. Many dam-opponents argue that artefactsare difficult to transport, will lose their importance once detachedfrom their natural environment and territory-of-belonging, andthat the Cultural Park is not likely to attract many tourists(Shoup, 2006; Ilhan, 2009; CounterCurrent, 2011).


3.2.3. Integrating and up scaling hydrosocial territoriesThe capital- and knowledge-intensive nature of the Ilisu Dam

urged the Turkish government to search for funding and expertiseabroad, bringing together different consortia with constructioncompanies and investors from, among others, Germany, Switzer-land and Austria. This direct foreign involvement upscales andenlarges the Ilisu Dam’s hydrosocial territory, making new actorsrelevant and the dam debate international. Involving Europeancompanies coincided with Turkey’s acceptance as a EuropeanUnion candidate in 1999. Although it is not clear how this accep-tance helped unite European companies and the Turkish govern-ment, the EU accession process reconfigured the Ilisu project’shydro-politics in several ways.

Most importantly, foreign companies and investors applied forexport credit guarantees from their respective national exportcredit agencies (ECAs) which brought European civil-society actorsinto the anti-dam campaign, especially to hold national companiesand their ECAs accountable for investments and actions abroad.The Swiss Berne Declaration, the Austrian ECA and the GermanCounterCurrent are examples of NGOs that lobbied to cancelexport credit guarantees, urging ECAs to demand compliance withinternational standards (Atzle, 2014; Eberlein et al., 2010). Theseinternational standards lifted Ilisu Dam construction hydro- andenvironmental policies from European to global levels. Morespecifically, though Turkey had officially rejected World Commis-sion on Dams (WCD) recommendations published in 2000(Fujikura and Nakayama, 2009) and disregards World Bank stan-dards, this pressured to include them, at least partially, since Ger-man and Swiss Governments welcomed WCD recommendationsand World Bank standards, and took them into account to evaluatethe Ilisu project (Eberlein et al., 2010). In effect, Turkish authoritiespublished an environmental impact assessment (EIA) and resettle-ment plan (RP) in 2005, both documents not required by Turkishlaw. The EIA and the RP reports were published just as Europeancompanies and ECAs got involved, and Turkey-EU accession nego-tiations began officially, suggesting that Turkey’s aspiration to jointhe EU was a major incentive to align dam plans with Europeanand international requirements.

Although the European companies finally withdrew and Turkeydecided to self-finance the project (as also happened three yearsearlier for the Yusufeli Dam (Evren, 2014)), the internationalanti-Ilisu campaign attracted a lot of attention in Turkey and thecontractor countries and temporarily succeeded in stopping IlisuDam construction, shaping the Ilisu Dam project considerably.

The increasingly international ‘arena of protest’ can, besides theinvolvement of European consortia, also be explained by thepolitical climate in Turkey. For example, because of the state ofemergency in southeastern Turkey until 2002, civil society organi-zations and state authorities distrust each other, and freedom ofexpression and association are limited (Interview Ayboga, 2013;Setton and Drillisch, 2006). This made it dangerous to criticizethe project in Turkey, and the protest movement was often por-trayed as ‘terrorist’ or ‘separatist’. Transnational alliances have pro-vided the anti-dam protest movement with new powers andpossibilities.

Such dam opposition coalitions are highly dynamic, usingmulti-scale, international politics and expanding the issue of damdevelopment both geographically and in ‘issue reach’. Politics ofscale are therefore not only about characteristics of the environ-ment or resources that determine who is a relevant social actorbut also about strategic framing of an issue according to particularscales so that power and authority are reconfigured (Cf. Budds andHinojosa, 2012; Swyngedouw and Williams, 2016; Warner et al.,2014). Framing the Ilisu Dam’s hydrosocial territory on multipleissue scales involved Kurdish activists, environmentalists andothers; involving European investors enabled anti-dam coalitions

to frame dam development also as a European affair. Interestingly,the Turkish Government continued framing the Tigris’ manage-ment as an exclusively national concern, depicting the river asbeing purely Turkish and disregarding its transnational flows orother supra-national dimensions (Warner et al., 2014). This wouldexclude certain actors from the relevant hydrosocial territory, toweaken international opposition claims. In frames constructed bythe Turkish government and dam opposition coalitions, not onlyhydrological flows define who is in or out of the respectivehydrosocial territory. Accordingly, scalar policies play a decisiverole in negotiations and struggles surrounding Ilisu Dam develop-ment and create diverging territorial imaginaries.

Although ignored by the nation-based discourse and imaginedcommunity constructed by the Turkish government, the diverseexisting and newly forged local-national-regional scales becomeincreasingly relevant and important. The transboundary natureof the Tigris and Euphrates river basin caused tensions amongIraq, Syria and Turkey, also leading international institutions(such as the World Bank) to refuse to fund dam construction(Harris, 2002). Tensions are about Turkey’s possibility to ‘turnoff the tap’, expected negative impacts on downstream agricul-tural activity as well as about politics concerning the Kurdishquestion. Turkish authorities, however, argue that the Ilisu Damwill not negatively affect water quality or quantity, as it is notconstructed for consumption such as irrigation but rather forhydropower and drought and flood control (Ministry of ForeignAffairs, 2013).

Interregional water dependence also links the anti-Ilisu Dammovement’s success with organizations in the region. In the1990s and early 2000s, anti-dam protests found good allies in Syriaand Iraq, but opposition became more difficult in 2006 when rela-tions among the three countries improved (Warner, 2008). Whilelater newly resurging regional instability and conflict severelychanged high-level political relations once again, it remains as dif-ficult as ever for the anti-Ilisu Dam movement to find allies in thetwo neighboring states. Nevertheless, in the past ten years of strug-gle, the Turkish local level has been linked with the most affectedarea in Iraq, as both the Ilisu Dam project area and the marsh landsin Iraq are home to minorities. Marsh Arabs have, like the Kurds,experienced much oppression because of their ethnic identity inthe past and now see their livelihoods threatened by the IlisuDam (Carkoglu and Eder, 2001). Those factors, and efforts by orga-nizations to engage in scale politics and promote transnational sol-idarity, have led to joint efforts and actions. For example, in May2012 marsh Arab tribal leaders traveled to Hasankeyf to announcetheir solidarity with the anti-dam struggle and jointly sign a decla-ration against dam construction (Stop Ilisu, 2012). Furthermore,Iraqi environmental organizations participated in the ‘World RiverConference’ (May 2013, Istanbul) organized by the DamocracyMovement.

In short, a number of diverging imaginaries about hydrosocialterritories encapsulate various constellations of actors, landscapes,science and technology. Certain coalitions engaged in the anti-damstruggle are united by a common goal. Yet, the common goal ofpreventing the Ilisu Dam is for each one of them part of a broadercampaign, connected to divergent underlying interests, views andrepresentations – for example, the misperception of dams beinggreen energy, injustices inflicted on the Kurdish people, and priva-tization policies in Turkey. This does not devalue the anti-damstruggle; rather, it shows how the multi-dimensionality of ahydro-political project unites groups and stakeholders from differ-ent backgrounds. It also shows that there is no simple ‘truth’ aboutthe Ilisu Dam but that everybody constructs his or her own techno-political and hydrosocial imaginary, shaped by the broader context,personal position and discourses about the region and damdevelopment.


While previous sections have examined the different stakehold-ers opposing the dam, the following section will focus on the posi-tions of local people. Representations from dam opposingorganizations about the local population affected by the IlisuDam do not always cover actual views and identities of the peopleand their dam imaginaries. Rather, local engagement with damopposition coalitions is ambiguous and has fluctuated with time,being sturdier at the beginning of the struggle and transforminginto widespread resignation as years passed by. The following sec-tion will provide further detail, outlining how the Ilisu Dam isimagined to reconfigure the hydrosocial territory locally and thenelaborating on actual local involvement in the anti-Dam struggleand engagement with associated imaginaries. Finally, a brief over-view is provided of the dynamics evolving at the time of writing.

4. Local involvement and emerging dynamics

Non-governmental organizations estimate that there arearound 78,000 people living in the area to be affected by dam con-struction (CounterCurrent, 2011). Several concerns exist regardinglocal impact of the project: compensation eligibility criteria, com-pensation sufficiency and disadvantages for women, landless peo-ple and people displaced by the Turkish–Kurdish conflict(Morvaridi, 2004; Ronayne, 2005; Cernea, 2006). The overall doubtis whether people will be enabled to restore their livelihoods afterresettlement.

Accounts differ regarding local people’s own imaginaries abouthow the dam will reconfigure their territory as well as the degreeto which their views were consulted and taken into account bydecision-makers. Dam-opponents argue that there was no satisfac-tory consultation, while the government says there has beenplenty of participation (DSI and Ilisu Consortium, 2005). Similarly,dam-opposing organizations agree that most local residentsoppose the dam (Setton and Drillisch, 2006; ECA Watch, 2009)while the government’s resettlement plan states that people wel-come the dam as an opportunity for new jobs and to escape pov-erty (DSI and Ilisu Consortium, 2005). Although such accountsmust be viewed carefully, some local groups do directly profit fromthe dam. For example, owners of large estates are likely to get con-siderable expropriation money for their land, as will people own-ing land close to the construction site, where property valueshave increased considerably (Morvaridi, 2004; Interview Ayboga,2013; Ronayne, 2005). Such a timely increase in land values, forbetter or for worse, has also been observed in other dam-affectedareas (e.g., Evren, 2014).

Accounts about the local population’s involvement in strugglesagainst the dam are ambiguous. Especially before the Ilisu projectwas nationalized in 2010, grassroots protest actions involved, forexample, dam-affected people handing over 1500 signed lettersto European embassies in Ankara (2008) or a local delegationmeeting European ambassadors in person (2009). Scheumannet al. (2014) also argue that people expressed their dam oppositionby voting for dam-opposing parties (Kurdish Peace and DemocracyParty) which, however, also represented other ‘Kurdish concerns’beyond the dam issue. Nevertheless, some organizations alsoexpressed their resentment about the sometimes missing pre-paredness of local inhabitants to actively participate in anti-damprotests (Interview Doga Dernegi, 2013; Interview Ayboga, 2013).This could, among other things, be due to the larger social contextwhich makes that people who oppose the dam might be scared toopenly express criticism, also considering the fact that anti-damactivists have been arrested in the past.

At the same time, Hasankeyf residents criticized organizationsprioritizing environmental and archaeological issues over peopleand their poverty (Interview Hasankeyf resident, 2013) and Elma

(2013: 4) notes that ‘‘arguments by [. . .] activists [. . .] are often sit-uated at a stereotypical rhetoric level that seems out of touch withthe local community’s fears and aspirations.” This suggests thatlocal residents actively engage with the imaginaries employed bydam-opposing organizations, while they do not necessarily holdthe same view or feel represented by them. In the mentioned inter-view and the evoked dam imaginary, for example, potential eco-nomic benefits prevailed over ecological threats or Kurdish rightsconcerns.

Time, with the Ilisu project hanging like a sword of Damoclesover the area for decades now, can also change local attitudesand involvement: it leads to mental stress and to de-politicizingthe project as the local population longs for certainty. This feedsacceptance and ‘de facto’ self-correction by the local populationin accordance with rulers’ territorial construction interests. Actionsby the anti-dam movement prolong waiting and uncertainty, erod-ing local support for the movement as local people have to copewith uncertainty every day. This happened with the anti-YusufeliDam campaign (Evren, 2014) and is also confirmed by severalsources for the Ilisu case. For example, a Doga Dernegi representa-tive said ‘‘They [the local people] are tired and bored now; theywant a final decision” (Interview Doga Dernegi, 2013) and a news-paper article titled ‘‘Hasankeyf locals stuck in limbo” cited a Hasan-keyf resident: ‘‘The people here are tired. For decades, they heardthere was going to be a dam [. . .]. They lost patience. Many of themhave told me, ‘If we have to go, if we are going to lose this place,let’s do it as quickly as possible.’” (Today’s Zaman, 20 January2013). At the same time, other people have been deeply convincedby GAP discourse or have actual hopes to benefit from the IlisuDam and the GAP program in general, through job creation andeducation opportunities (Harris, 2012). The web of power, territo-rial reality construction, and resistance is complex and ambivalent.This overlaps with Harris’ call to ‘‘move beyond simplistic associa-tions of the southeast as ‘Kurdish’ or necessarily oppositional to theTurkish state’ (Harris, 2009: 14).

The Ilisu Dam is expected to open late 2016 but discussions orprotests have not stopped: different protest actions, such as bicyclerallies or gatherings in Hasankeyf, were organized in 2014 and2015, and some political parties associated with the Kurdish peo-ple made the dam a campaign issue during the presidential elec-tions in 2014. A court rule in July 2014 states that the Ilisu Damcannot be exempted from the mandatory environmental impactassessment, reversing the Turkish Government’s earlier change oflaws (Hürriyet Daily News, 7 July 2014). Furthermore, the PKKhas called upon construction workers to resign, attacked machin-ery needed for dam construction and abducted two subcontractors(Dargecit Haber, 5 December 2014; Hürriyet Daily News, 18August 2014). These developments, between August and Decem-ber 2014, halted constructions, resumed only when workers frommainly non-Kurdish provinces were brought to work at the site(Interview Ayboga, 2015) under tight security measures, involvingover 1000 soldiers and recruiting Kurdish village militia (Ayboga,2015a). The situation remains tense as recent Ilisu constructionsite clashes show (June 2015, Ayboga, 2015b). Resurgence of ten-sions between the Turkish government and the PKK and the result-ing dam area militarization also involve the Turkish government’snon-intervention to defend the Kurdish city of Kobane in Syriaagainst the Islamic State, which sparked resentment among Kurdsliving in Turkey. Resettlement from Hasankeyf village has not yethappened, though construction of ‘New Hasankeyf’ is advancing.

Research activity in dam-affected areas seems limited. Generalacademic interest in dam construction in Turkey is instead shiftingto projects in the Black Sea region (e.g., Islar, 2012). Nevertheless, itremains crucial to investigate how the Ilisu Dam construction willultimately re-configure hydrosocial territory and how buildinghydraulic infrastructure opposes, entwines with and/or changes


people’s imaginaries about themselves and their socio-economic,cultural, political and ecological environment. Future analysis ofon-the-ground hybrid materialization of the GAP hydrosocial terri-tory can significantly complement our paper’s insights and focus offirst and foremost analyzing the diverging regimes of representingwhat the Ilisu Dam’s hydrosocial territory is or should be, accord-ing to different stakeholders and coalitions.

The Government’s hydro-political imaginary envisages a pro-ductive region through GAP and the Ilisu Dam: a ‘breadbasket’and energy producer, fully enrolled (economically, spatially andsocio-culturally) in the Turkish nation-state. This secure, re-configured territory’s imagined inhabitants are controllable, ‘wellintegrated’ Turkish citizens on their way to ‘modernity’, prosperityand ‘civilization’. This imaginary is challenged by regimes of repre-sentation defining the Ilisu Dam project area’s perceived environ-mental, cultural and social values, rather than its hydropowerand purely economic potential. Hence, both the government anddam opponents (forming alliances of various issues and scales bydefining a common goal and a common adversary) construct andpromote their own imaginaries of the Ilisu Dam and its desiredor feared impacts. The actual impacts and real-life consequencesof GAP and the Ilisu Dam remain to be seen: who wins and wholoses, or where and how territorial imaginaries and materializa-tions will hybridize, a fundamental topic for future studies abouthydrosocial territories in Turkey.

5. Conclusions

Ongoing planning and construction efforts, negotiation pro-cesses and struggles to stop dam building, in a context of tremen-dous political, economic and cultural sensitivities, make the IlisuDam project a very insightful case of a hydrosocial territory andits various imaginaries. Different stakeholders construct differentsocio-natural imaginaries and build multi-actor and multi-scalecoalitions to justify or de-justify the Ilisu Dam according to theirbackgrounds and interests. Coalitions and their mobilized regimesof representation evolve and change over time, showing howhighly dynamic these hydrosocial territories’ imaginaries oftenare. We have shown an overview of arguments by the Turkish gov-ernment, and its alleged underlying interests, as contrasted andcontradicted by the wide array of dam opponents. We discussedhow such a massive infrastructure project has different effectsfor different people and ecologies, generating winners and loserswith outcomes that are not yet clear. Therefore, impact analysiscannot be based on overall categorizations and generalizationsbut must scrutinize on-the-ground effects, considering highlydivergent cultural, political, technological and ecological issues,and differentiate among a wide variety of nearby and distantplaces, peoples and livelihoods.

Our analytical focus combining hydrosocial territoriality andgovernmentality has shown how mega-hydraulic developmentprojects make or imagine territorial re-configuration: hydrologi-cally, physically, economically, socio-culturally and discursively,all at once and in entwined ways. The case study’s theoretical lensof hydrosocial territoriality showcases dam construction’s multi-dimensionality, including governmentality projects going farbeyond ‘just’ water governance. Allegedly ‘neutral’, ‘technical’hydro-infrastructure projects entail discourses implying concealedefforts to reconfigure existing socio-natural relationships andimplant new meanings, values, distribution patterns and framesof rule-making and alignment; they aim to build profoundly new‘territory’ matching powerful ruling group interests (in peopleand resources) to self-governing citizens.

Our engagement with the concept of hydro-social territoriesshows how it presents a theoretical innovation as compared to

similar concepts such as, for example, those of waterscape andthe hydro-social cycle (see, e.g. Baviskar, 2007; Boelens, 2014;Harris and Alatout, 2010; Linton and Budds, 2014; Swyngedouw,2007, 2009), as it stresses the potential diversity of overlapping,simultaneously existing hydro-territorial regimes and imaginariesin one and the same geo-political location that result from multi-scalar political geography shaped by water flows, technologies,institutions and power structures. Further, by incorporating thegovernmentality focus, the subtleties of the web of domination-resistance get important attention, whereby Foucault’s govern-mentality studies are reconsidered in terms of socionaturalnetworks rather than as a sole matter of biopolitics. ‘‘Governmentis the right disposition of things . . .”, as Foucault himself states, ‘‘. . .what government has to do with is not territory but rather a sort ofcomplex composed of men and things. The things with which inthis sense government is to be concerned are in fact men, butmen in their relations, their links, their imbrication with thoseother things which are wealth, resources, means of substance,the territory with its specific qualities, climate, irrigation, fertility,etc.; men in their relation to that other kind of things, customs,habits, ways of acting and thinking, etc. . .” (Foucault 1991(1978):93). In this Foucauldian conceptualization power is omni-present (which is not the same as omnipotent, or hegemonic asin Gramscian conceptualization). In that sense, this paper demon-strated how power is not ‘‘in” or ‘‘possessed by” particular humangroups, nor is it fixed in the technology. Power acts as a mediatingforce and is reshaped and redistributed through inter-human andhuman-nature-technology interaction. Accordingly, power andresistance are produced in action at every moment and notrestricted to particular nodes or locations.

Finally, although dam opponents did not attain their goal,involving multiple organizations in the struggle stimulated debateabout the dam and questioned dominant Turkish government dis-courses. Their actions have helped to attract national and interna-tional attention to injustices happening in the southeasternprovinces – more of which will be needed. The dominant imagi-nary has now been deeply contested and cannot simply materializeas foreseen, in hegemonic territory. The near future will track thesehydrosocial collisions and territorial struggles, in on-the-ground,plural, always-contested territorial imaginaries.

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Contested hydrosocial territories and disputed water ... · 2/14/2016 · different hydrosocial territories regarding this mega-hydraulic project currently under construction. Imaginaries,