If so, how Turkey should frame this issue? To understand this issue better, we have to look into the details of matter. It is the connection to physical and biological systems while security is defined as protecting the national values against foreign threats.
Robert Kaplan’s article “The Coming Anarchy” focuses on the connection between security and environment. He argued that volatile and destructive threats were spreading to other regions and would be exacerbated by rising sea levels, changing rainfall patterns and more frequent natural disasters arising from anthropogenic climate change. His core message was that, ‘it is time to understand “the environment” ‘ for what it is: the national-security issue of the early twenty-first century.”
He has argued that several connections between the environment and security – existential, physical and political – began to emerge.
In the same way, we can also consider Turkey’s position in Middle East.
The existential link forms a fundamental part of Turkish security interests. When these values are threatened our security is therefore threatened.
The physical link argues that there is a direct connection between degradation of the environment and Turkish security. It is impossible to reinstate the global environment change but we can contain and coexist common security concepts.
The political link is indirect and involves refugees and resource wars offers the weakest threat but the strongest intellectual challenge. In other words, political conflicts caused by environmental harm are most likely to occur in regions that concerns the Turkey directly.
In April 2007, the UN Security Council held its first ever debate on climate security. The chair of this debate, then British Foreign Secretary Margaret Becket, left no doubt as to the connection between climate and conflict: “What makes wars start? Fights over water. changing patterns of rainfall, fights over food production, land use.”
Considering these facts, should Turkey be concerned about the connection between environmental degradation and war?
We believe it should be.
The more dependent a country is on one national resource the more vulnerable it is to civil war. Let’s look at the situation in Iraq, Libya and Syria. They all have oil, they have limited irrigation resources, they have all limited land for agriculture and lack of food, shelter and sanitation is at high level.
This creates another danger of in which they live make infectious disease more likely to spread. They experience trauma, malnutrition and lack of adequate medical care. Due to these stresses, they cannot fight off illnesses.
For example, in Iraq the electricity grid was unreliable, therefore leading to sewage treatment equipment to stop working, thus dumping industrial waste right into the Tigris river, which is Baghdad’s only source of water. This contributed to a serious outbreak of hepatitis. In fact, the risk of death in general in Iraq after the 2003 invasion doubled. The major cause was violence, mainly attributed to coalition air strikes – most victims were women and children. Also measles, mumps and rubella were ravaging the country’s children 1/3 of which are chronically malnourished. Iraq’s once robust state of health is now comparable to Yemen or Afghanistan – with very high infant mortality and little access to clean water and sanitation.
Turkey has Tigris and Euphrates rivers born in Anatolia. These are the main water resources for Syria and Iraq. They are basically the only two water resources for potable water as well as irrigation purposes. But the civil war in the region caused destruction to water dams, irrigation channels and increasing health problems. Moreover, it increases the food prices since the factories do not have enough resources to produce basic food production for people’s need. Can Syria and Iraq continue to import buying basic food needs from neighboring country while their economies are deterring? If economy get weakened in this countries including high level corruption existing, the border control and illicit business might start raising. Is it for the benefit of Turkey in the region?
For all these aspects, environment has a vital role in national security of Turkey. Environmental degradation does not only impose threats to Turkey although it can be manageable but also to Turkey’s neighbors which have no sufficient resources to fight with. Thus imposes direct and indirect threats such as refugee problems, illicit business, border security, terrorism and health security.
Human and environmental change is motivated by the desire to create analytical and political-policy space for addressing core needs and right of people vulnerable to serious socio-ecological threats. As resources became scarcer and local living conditions harsher, populations with weak governments that are unable to assist those people in adapting to changes will likely to resort to methods of self-preservation. And that that is what happens in Iraq and Syria.
