Turkey Plans to Sell Rivers and Lakes to Corporations

In March 2009 the Turkish government will host the fifth World Water Forum against a backdrop of what is probably the most sweeping water privatisation programme in the world. As well as privatizing water services, the government plans to sell of rivers and lakes. Turkish social movements, who hosted their own conference in Istanbul last month, suspect the Government is using the World Water Forum to push through this highly controversial agenda.

Previous sessions of the World Water Forum, held once every three years, have faced opposition from civil society groups who consider it an illegitimate, flawed platform for discussing solutions to the world's water problems. The Forum is controlled by the World Water Council, a private think-tank with close links to the World Bank and private water multinationals. This criticism is likely to become even more intense in the run-up to the March 2009 Forum, given the host government's radical privatisation push.

More than 350 people attended the two-day conference 'Water: Under the Yoke of Capitalism', which was organized by Supolitik Iletisim Agi (the Waterpolitics Network) with Turkish trade unions and civil society groups. In the opening session, Serhat Salihoglu from the Municipal Workers' Union (DISK) described the political context for the 2009 World Water Forum: the government -- led by the conservative Justice and Development Party (AKP) -- wants to privatise all public services. Earlier that month, the government had presented proposals to deregulate public services. A new law would allow private firms to bid for concessions to run the country's water utilities.

This privatisation drive follows previous neoliberal reforms which have left local governments strapped for cash and unable to properly fulfill their water management obligations. Only 8 percent of municipalities have water treatments plants and 25 percent of industrial waste water is untreated. The government is also planning to weaken public agencies such as the Bank of Provinces and the State Water Works Agency, which will undermine the capacity for public planning and investment and leave municipalities at the mercy of international financial institutions with pro-privatisation leanings.

Tahir Ongur from the Istanbul branch of the Chamber of Geology Engineers (TMMOB) explained that the government not only wants to privatize drinking water supplies, but also the water resources themselves. Energy and Natural Resources Minister Hilmi Guler has announced that rivers and lakes will be sold to private companies, for periods of up to 49 years. The government believes that allowing private firms to build dams in rivers and lakes which they also own is the best way to overcome water shortages, both for drinking water and rural irrigation. As part of this unprecedented privatisation offensive, the government aims to rush through a constitutional reform before the March 2009 World Water Forum. The main target is Article 43 of the constitution, which limits private control of coastal lines, rivers, lakes, etc. and underlines that the public interest should take priority.

Diren Ozkan from Save Hasankeyf criticised the continued proliferation of destructive large scale dam projects in Turkey. A particularly shocking example is the Ilisu dam site on the Tigris River, which will drown the ancient town of Hasankeyf and many nearby villages, displacing 78,000 people, mainly Kurds. The dam will cause tremendous environmental destruction and flood hundreds of ancient sites.

Abdullah Aysu, President of the Peasants' Federation, spoke passionately against government policies for privatising agricultural irrigation. The plans to replace management by rural cooperatives with a system of concession rights sold to private firms would have disastrous consequences for subsistence farmers and their communities, who would lose their rights to local water resources. Groundwater in rural areas is seriously depleted due to uncontrolled drilling, but commercialization is not the answer. The only real solution to these problems, Aysu explained, is to shift to a more natural model of agriculture, which he described as "ecological democracy."