Major cities in Turkey have run out of water in the next few months, with warnings that Istanbul has less than 45 days of water left.
Poor rainfall has led to the country’s worst drought in a decade and has put the megacity of 17 million people close to running out of water, according to Turkey’s chemical engineering chamber. Ankara Mayor Mansur Yavaş said earlier this month that the capital still has 110 days of dams and reservoirs.
Izmir and Bursa, Turkey’s next two largest cities, are also struggling, with dams about 36% and 24% full, respectively, and farmers in wheat-producing areas such as the Konya Plain and Edirne province on the border with Greece and Bulgaria. crop failure warning.
The critically low rainfall in the second half of 2020 – which was 50% year-on-year in November each year – led the religious affairs board to instruct imams and their congregations to pray for rain last month.
Turkey is a “water stress” country, with only 1,346 cubic meters of water per capita per year, and has faced several droughts since the 1980s due to a combination of population growth, industrialization, urban expansion and climate change.
“Instead of focusing on measures to keep water demand under control, Turkey is urging to expand its water supply by building more dams … Turkey has built hundreds of dams over the past two decades,” he said. Akgün İlhan, an expert on water management at Istanbul, said. Policy Center.
“The warning signs have been around for decades, but in practice not much has been done.”
Turkey has long prioritized economic growth as an environmental aspect and remains the only G20 country, apart from the US, that has yet ratified the 2015 Paris Agreement.
“Everyone knows that water basins need to be preserved, especially for these increasingly severe and long-term drought episodes,” said Dr Ümit Şahin, who teaches global climate change and environmental policy at Sabancı University in Istanbul.
‘But in Istanbul, for example, the most important water basins, the last forests and agricultural land, [have been opened] to urban development projects … the new airport, the new Bosphorus Bridge, its connecting roads and highways, and the Istanbul Canal Project. This policy cannot solve Turkey’s drought problem. ”
Ekrem İmamoğlu, who was elected mayor of the Istanbul opposition party in 2019, despite fierce opposition from the ruling Justice and Development Party in Turkey, told the Guardian Istanbul was reassured that the large Melen dam system would meet the city’s water needs without problems until 2070.
Upon taking office, however, his administration realized that construction problems would delay the project by several years.
For the time being, the municipality has encouraged residents to think carefully about how they can save water, including turning off the faucet while brushing or shaving teeth, valves that import into sinks, take off and install lower use faucet.
‘Water would not be a problem today if the dam were active. But we also have to think about wide-ranging issues about climate change … If it does not rain in Melen, you can not get water from there either, ‘said İmamoğlu.
According to Izçmir, the mayor of the city, Tunis Soyer, the local authorities prepared them for water shortages by digging 103 new boreholes, recycling wastewater and minimizing losses and leaks.
In the end, Turkey’s cities immediately need a lot of rain to avoid rationing water for the next few months – and even sustained rainfall for the rest of the winter may not be enough for farming communities to save this year’s crops.
Drought creates a vicious circle, says İlhan: reduced agricultural production and increased food prices could lead to an increase in poverty and rural to urban migration, which would exacerbate the current pressure on water infrastructure.
‘Turkey does have the economic and technological means to repair its damaged water cycle. The missing element is the political will to take these steps. ”