Water and Conflict Geographies of the Southeastern Anatolia Project

While many accounts of water and conflict focus on the possibility of future interstate conflict resulting from changing quantities and qualities of freshwater, a multiscalar approach helps to demonstrate the manifold, complex, and reciprocal relations between uses of water and social/political conflicts. Using Turkey's Southeastern Anatolia Project (GAP) as a demonstration of the complex interrelations between water uses and social conflicts, this article illustrates the multiple temporalities, spatialities, and modalities of water and conflict geographies. Explicit attention to the historical and geographical dimensions of water and conflict in specific settings helps to complicate our understanding of these relationships, points to the importance of intrastate and local scales as potential sites of conflict (including the role of nonstate actors), and enriches discussions related to "sustainability" of water resource uses over time.