By Jwan Shekaki
Adana Agreement was supposed to be the termination of years of tension between Syria and Turkey over two main issues – the water crisis and the Kurdish question. However, after 25 years of the agreement, water cut-off to Syria, mainly its north, continues, and the Kurdish question is still used as a pretext for further Turkish offensives and atrocities against Syria’s Kurds.
It was in 1998 when the Turkish army threatened to invade Syria because of the presence of Abdullah Ocalan, leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in Damascus, claiming that Syrian territory was being used a front to plan attacks against Turkey.
The enmity between the two countries goes back to not only decades, but also to centuries (the Ottoman Empire), where Turkey’s feeling of superiority paved the way for itself to always make pressure on Syria, sometimes weaponizing water and other times threatening to resort to military methods under the pretext of the PKK headquarters which poses risk to “Turkish national security.”
Turkey has always been a disturbing neighbor to Syria as all its activities have harmed Syrian people. Between late 1990s and early 2000s, Turkey achieved the Southeastern Anatolia Project (GAP) that includes the establishment of a number of dams on the Euphrates and Tigris, cutting off water to both Syria and Iraq, a step that violates the international covenants. For example, according to the 1987 agreement signed between Turkey, Syria and Iraq under the auspices of the United Nations, Syria’s share of the Euphrates River is 500 cubic meters per second, but the amount of water stored behind the Euphrates Dam has decreased from 14 billion cubic meters to only 10 billion, causing the Euphrates Lake to lose 75 percent of its effective reserve. Also, the maximum level of the Euphrates Lake is 304 meters above sea, but the level has dropped to 297,75. The lake has lost over six meters vertically, with two cm daily loss.
Additionally, Turkey has spared no efforts to hold Syria accountable for the PKK activities accusing it of opening training camps, weaponizing members, and sending them to the Turkish territory for fighting.
However, and in response to Turkey’s acts of aggression, the late Syrian President Hafiz al-Assad was more clever, as he tended to make a balance between the Turkish claims and the Kurdish issue, knowing that the Kurds in Syria have always been peaceful and have not initiated any attacks against the Turkish lands. They have only sought to defend themselves. They keep denying the Turkish claims that there are PKK members among them who frequently launch attacks against Turkey. At the same time, Syria’s Kurds demand Turkey to present conclusive evidence regarding Turkish accusation of Syria’s Kurds of launching attacks on targets inside Turkey.
The situation went on until 1998, when Syria received serious threats of invasion by Turkey, the matter led both former President of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, and former President of Iran, Muhammad Khatami, to intervene and try to solve the dispute between the two neighboring countries. Shortly, the Egyptian-Iranian mediation, along with the serious threats of Turkey and the new world order following the collapse of the Soviet Union, resulted in the necessity that Abdullah Ocalan, who was residing in Syria, must leave the country, and that was what really happened.
Ocalan, along with the PKK members, left Syria on Oct. 9, 1998. And the event was wrapped up with signing of the so-called Adana Agreement between Syria and Turkey on Oct. 20, 1998 during which the latter imposed its conditions through consensus on the border dispute which means that Syria had ceded the Sanjak of Alexandretta to Turkey. The agreement was primarily about how to get rid of the PKK from Syria.
However, it is noteworthy that 25 years after the agreement, Turkey has kept depriving Syrian people of water, has launched four cross-border military operations in northern Syria and occupied a number of cities and towns. This means that neither Ocalan nor the PKK is the crux of the problem, further, it is the historical animosity towards the neighboring peoples. This is one thing, the other is that even if we accept and believe that the matter is the PKK’s presence, all the peoples and governments know well that the European countries including NATO members – Turkey’s allies – are hosting PKK supporters who take to the streets at every opportunity and hold the PKK flags and Ocalan banners, so Turkey can demand those governments to prevent the demonstration for the “terrorist organization” and hand over the wanted people to Turkey.
Early in September, Russia’s minister of Foreign Affairs, Sergei Lavrov, talked about the possibility of reviving the Adana Agreement between Syria and Turkey. “This agreement is still in force, no one has denounced it,” he said, proposing that Turkey can deploy troops in northern Syria.
Anyway, it seems that the abovementioned outstanding problems between the two countries will remain unsolved for several reasons, the most prominent of which is that their joint ally – Russia – has not yet decided.