Browsing by Author "Islar, Mine"

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Decentralization: Resolve or Hide the Problem?
(2011) Nastar, Maryam; Islar, Mine
"Governance of common resources such as water calls for rethinking structure, legal frameworks and property rights. In order to promote the decentralization of water governance, Water User Associations (WUAs) were created in many countries, such as India and Turkey, to operate and maintain irrigation systems as well as take over the responsibility of water distribution among water users. Despite progress in these activities, the efficacy of WUAs in terms of securing water rights for all water users has received criticism in some studies. By looking at the different power dynamics and thus inequalities, this paper assesses the performance of WUAs in Urfa province in Turkey. This includes a closer look at institutional arrangement of WUAs in effectively managing the irrigation systems and protecting water user’s access rights. The result of this study is used to explore the underlying problems associated with WUAs in promoting sustainable water governance in terms of equitable water access and allocation. This paper argues that due to asymmetric power relations in these regions, securing equal water access and allocation is unlikely to be achievable. In other words, in the absence of a fair process of decision-making, WUAs will fail to achieve the intended benefits of decentralization policies. This raises the need to critically assess the premise of structural reforms in the water sector and a careful consideration of the water governance practices in different contexts where inequalities are evident."
Political Ecology of Inter-Basin Water Transfers in Turkish Water Governance
(2014) Islar, Mine; Boda, Chad
"We explore the emergence of two contemporary mega water projects in Turkey that are designed to meet the demands of the country’s major urban centers. Moreover, we analyze how policy makers in the water sector frame problems and solutions. We argue that these projects represent a tendency to depoliticize water management and steer away from controversial issues of water allocation by emphasizing large-scale, centralized, technical, and supply-oriented solutions. In doing so, urgent concerns are ignored regarding unsustainable water use, impacts on rural livelihoods, and institutional shortcomings in the water sector. These aspirations build heavily on prevailing discourses of modernity, development, and economic growth, and how urban centers are perceived as drivers of this growth. In the light of these tendencies, social and environmental implications are downplayed, even though the projects will change or already have changed the dynamics within urban-rural life and agricultural water resources practices. We develop an understanding of how such projects are presented as the only solution to problems of water scarcity in Turkey."
Privatised Hydropower Development in Turkey: A Case of Water Grabbing?
(2012) Islar, Mine
"This paper investigates how river privatisation in Turkey is deployed to expand renewable energy production and the implications this has for issues of ownership, rights to water and community life. Recent neoliberal reforms in Turkey have enabled the private sector to lease the rights to rivers for 49 years for the sole purpose of electricity production. The paper focuses on the re-scaling and reallocation of control over rivers through technical-legal redefinition of productive use, access and rights; and on discursive practices that marginalise rural communities and undermine alternative framings of nature. In order to actuate hydropower projects, what previously constituted legitimate water use and access is being contested and redefined. This process involves redefining what is legal (and therefore also what is illegal) such that state regulatory mechanisms favour private-sector interests by the easement of rights on property, government incentives and regulation of use rights to water. Through this lens, in some cases this particular privatisation in Turkey can be understood as an instance of 'water grabbing', where powerful actors gain control over use and increase their own benefits by diverting water and profit away from local communities living along these rivers despite their resistance. The analysis is based on empirical evidence derived from semi-structured interviews, newspapers, governmental and NGO reports, and observations during 3 months of fieldwork in Ankara and several villages in North and South Anatolia."