Drowning the poor: The social and ecological costs of water development in Turkey.

摘要

This dissertation examines the ways in which water development projects have altered the socioeconomic structure and natural environment in southeastern Anatolia, Turkey. The main objective of this study is to examine the social and environmental costs of the Southeastern Anatolia Project (GAP) in Turkey, which entails the construction of 21 dams and 17 power plants on the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers and their tributaries. The primary objective of this integrated regional water development project is to assist the country's transition to export-oriented industrialization by utilizing water resources to provide stable supplies of cheap energy, as well as to promote large-scale irrigation for agricultural raw materials.; State officials claim that the poor in the region will be the main beneficiaries of the project. However, in this dissertation, I will argue that there are some significant social and ecological consequences of the GAP which are receiving scant attention from policy-makers and project planners. More specifically, I will add the following questions: what are the economic, social, and ecological costs and benefits of this project, and how are they distributed? Furthermore, how does the production and distribution of these costs grow out of export-oriented industrialization and the larger political-economy of Turkey? I assert that the GAP project is the product of a particular set of class relations in Turkey, as well as the country's place in the capitalist world economy.; In order to analyze the impacts of the GAP project on the people and nature, I will first focus on the socioeconomic sectors to be affected by the project. The meaning of ecological destruction for different classes or population categories will be examined, emphasizing the process of selective victimization and benefit. In the contrast to official claims, I argue that the project is causing massive ecological destruction and impoverishment for those who are supposed to be main beneficiaries. Through a process of selective victimization, the state is disproportionately displacing the social and ecological costs of the project onto the poor, landless and other marginalized groups in the region.