10 February 2025
Open letter from the European Water Movement to Ursula Von Der Leyen, President of the European Commission, Jessika Roswall, European Commissioner for the Environment and Water Resilience, and Dubravka Šuica, European Commissioner for the Mediterranean
The European Water Movement (EWM) and its members, together with the European Ecology Movement for Kurdistan (Tev-Eko), urge the European Commission to end its guilty silence facing the humanitarian and ecological drama currently unfolding in North and East Syria as a result of Turkish military aggression targeting the predominantly Kurdish civilian population and the Tişrin dam on the Euphrates river.
Turkey uses water as a weapon against Turkish, Syrian and Iraqi Kurds for years
In addition to using water as a weapon against the Kurds and their allies in Syria, Turkey is also waging an undeclared water war in transboundary river basins (Euphrates, Tigris) to impose its political hegemony on the concerned countries of Syria and Iraq.
Tev-Eko environmentalists, many of whom are members of the Kurdish diaspora in Europe, have documented these long-standing practices by Turkey (see statement of Tev-Eko).
During the negotiations for Turkey's accession to the European Union, the Turkish government at the time claimed to have adapted its water policy to that of the EU. EU water policy includes concerted river basin management, upstream-downstream solidarity, fair sharing of water between different uses, protection of aquatic environments, etc. Turkey does not apply this water policy at all, quite the contrary. EWM is therefore surprised that the European Commission has never made any comments to Turkey, even after the bombing of the Tişrin dam. The Tişrin dam provides water for the production of drinking water, agricultural irrigation and the production of electricity, all of which are essential to the lives of several hundred thousand people. Its destruction would have incalculable social and environmental consequences, as Tev-Eko explains, threatening the lives of future generations and the ecosystems of a large area downstream.
EU migration policy is contrary to human rights and ineffective in eradicating Islamic terrorism in Europe
Since 2016 the European Union has paid Turkey to prevent Syrians fleeing Hafez Al Assad's regime from taking refuge in Europe. In return, the EU turned a blind eye to the war crimes against the Kurds in Turkish-Kurdistan when several cities like Cizre, Sirnak and Nusaybin have been destroyed and half mio. people have been displaced in 2016, and atrocities perpetrated by the Islamist militias of the Syrian National Army (SNA) against the people unable to flee the mainly Kurdish populated Afrin region after its passage under Turkish control in 2018. As we have seen, this has not prevented Islamist attacks in Europe.
The same situation, but worse, is likely to occur again with the attack by Turkish army and its allies of SNA on the region of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria. The takeover of this democratically ruled region by the Turkish army and SNA will lead to the death of thousand of civilians, displacement of at least hundreds of thousand people as well as the release of Daech (Islamic State) prisoners, most of whom have European passports.
The European Commission must act in accordance with the values of the European Union
The European Commission, whose President recently solemnly reaffirmed the values upheld by the European Union, has a duty to put them into practice at all times. These European values are currently being flouted by Turkey in North and East Syria, and this will also have dramatic consequences within the Member States of the European Union in the not too distant future. We therefore urge the European Commission to do everything in its power to stop Turkey's military aggression in Syria.
contact : hello (at) europeanwater.org
