Iran accuses Turkey of causing dust storms in region
QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – Iran renewed its accusation against Turkey over its dam-building activities that cause sand and dust storms in the region.
Iran said that the dust storms come from the area between the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers, which are the areas run by the Autonomous Administration of North and East of Syria (AANES).
Last week, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said it is not acceptable for Iran that Turkey destroyed the region’s environmental conditions by constructing dams, which created problems for the people of the neighboring countries.
Turkish Foreign Ministry’s spokesman Tanju Bilgic said in a statement that such allegations “have no scientific basis.”
Iran is mainly impacted by the desert dust originating from Africa and the Middle East, which are the two most significant sources of global dust, Bilgic added.
Rejecting the Turkish statements regarding the source of dust storms, Reza Bani, advisor to the Natural Resources Management Authority in Iran, said that based on documents and satellite images, we can say that the center of dust storms is an area between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.
The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), which controls the area east of the Euphrates River, has warned on several occasions of the receding of the Euphrates River and the reduction of the water supply to less than half.
Turkey’s reduction of Syria’s shares of the Euphrates River led to the drop in the water level of the Euphrates by about three and a half meters near the Qara Cossack Bridge in the eastern countryside of Manbij, as of last April. This threatens the vegetation cover and agriculture. It also increases the hours of electricity rationing, as the region depends almost completely on the electricity generation from the Tishreen and Tabqa dams.
On Tuesday, the AANES said on its Facebook page that “an imminent disaster threatens the lives and livelihoods of more than five million people in north and east Syria, who depend on the Euphrates River to secure drinking water, irrigation and electricity.”
Northeast Syria has recently witnessed three dust storms, the last of which was two days ago and was considered the strongest in the last ten years, according to experts.
According to the 1987 agreement signed between Damascus and Ankara regarding the Euphrates River, Syria’s share of water coming from Turkey is no less than 500 cubic meters per second on average, equivalent to 2,500 barrels.
Syria’s share of the Euphrates water is estimated at 500 cubic meters per second, according to an agreement between Syria and Turkey signed in 1987.