Adnan Mirhanoğlu* and Eray Çaylı**

In Mesopotamia, a region central to mainstream historiographies of agriculture’s role in civilization as state building, hydrology has figured prominently in understandings of whether and/or how long states survive. “Civilizational collapse” has been attributed to irrigation practices that distribute water unevenly, such that some lands are overirrigated while others are desertified and salinized (Hillel 2000; Jacobsen and Adams 1958; Postel 1999). Turkey’s so-called Southeastern Anatolia Project or GAP is often treated as the latest case in point (Bilgili et al. 2018; Özerol and Bressers 2017). Initiated in 1977 amidst incipient armed conflict in the region, GAP’s founding premise was that “the Eastern Question” (as the problems plaguing this region were then called in Turkey) was the result of underdevelopment. GAP’s solution has mainly involved the construction of 22 dams and 19 hydroelectric power plants on the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, along with large-scale irrigation canals serving 1.8 million hectares of land (Bilgen 2020). Several decades on, GAP remains an ongoing project (46% of the areas where the masterplan proposed to build irrigation canals have yet to receive coverage) as does the question it has aimed to solve.

Filyra Vlastou-Dimopoulou*

The Lavrio camp was established in 1947 in the coastal town of Lavrio in Greece, as the country’s first state structure dedicated to the reception of asylum seekers. After 1980, due to the political instability in neighboring Turkey, the majority of the camp’s population consisted of left-wing Turkish asylum seekers and subsequently, almost exclusively of persecuted Kurdish asylum seekers predominantly from Turkey, who were associated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The Lavrio camp gradually acquired a central position within the trajectories of Kurdish migrants passing through (but also settling in) Greece and became a political showcase in exile for the struggle led by the PKK, as well as a part of the PKK’s transnational migrant network.

For the last 30 years, the Lavrio state-run camp was operated by the Red Cross in an informal cooperation with the PKK network. It was the PKK, for example, that decided in most cases who would, and who would not, be accommodated in the camp. However, in the midst of the so-called refugee crisis of 2015, and the multiple changes it brought in the governance of migration at the national and European level, the status of the camp changed dramatically. Specifically, in 2017, the Greek government demanded from camp residents to ‘de-politicise’ the camp by taking down all symbols, posters and images defining it as a political space of the PKK, and planned for camp residents to be moved to other recently established state-run camp facilities. When camp residents refused, the government withdrew from the site and the camp became self-organised. Since then, the camp was run with the support of the PKK network, as well as local, national, and transnational solidarity initiatives.

Pinar Dinc*

According to Greek mythology, there was a contest between two Olympian gods, Athena and Poseidon, to determine who would become the patron deity of the city that was ruled by Cecrops. The Olive tree was Athena’s gift to the city that made her win the competition and become the patron of Athens. The olive branch has also been an important symbol of peace as people associated the planting of olive trees with the dispelling of evil spirits and believed that it would endure peace. Some 2500 years later, it is hard to continue believing so. 

Following the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel captured vast amounts of Palestinian property between 1968 and 1979 and legitimized its actions with the argument that this was a temporary, military requisition for security purposes (Braverman 2009). Reports suggest that since 1967, over a million olive trees have been vandalized in Palestine via cutting, uprooting, stealing, burning, etc. Braverman (2009, pg. 130) explains Israel’s rationale for destructing olive trees in three ways: (1) Making way for the Separation Barrier, (2) abolishing hiding grounds for ‘terrorists’, and (3) for further security measures such as constructing watchtowers, checkpoints, fences, and roads around Jewish settlements.

Aysegul Arslan*

Amidst the extreme summer heat in the drylands of Urfa province in Southeastern Türkiye, the harvest season is starting at full speed, and thousands of seasonal agricultural workers – entire families – are ready to immigrate to work long hours in the fields. When temperatures regularly reach 40 ℃, agricultural work is extremely exhausting. Even though the exact number of people is unknown, most estimates suggest that at least one million people are engaged in seasonal and temporary informal agricultural labor in Türkiye. Most of them are landless Kurds from the Urfa city of Southeastern Türkiye and the majority neither own nor have access to land to earn their livelihoods. Every harvest season, thousands of landless Kurdish seasonal and temporary agricultural worker families migrate informally from the gecekondu districts, which are houses or shelters constructed quickly without proper legal permissions in Urfa city, to work in both Urfa’s rural areas and other regions in Türkiye. Most landless Kurdish seasonal agricultural workers do not have employment contracts and they are paid below the national minimum wage.