Damla Doğan Tuncel: There is no 'future' for water
I was in Egypt last month. When you look from the plane, it's a huge desert...
But in the middle of that desert, the measures the government has taken to manage water are astonishing. Even in the hotel, signs are posted in front of the trees: "It's irrigated with processed, purified water." In other words, the value they place on water is displayed like a plaque right before your eyes. Here, the situation is quite the opposite.
In Bursa, it's 35 days, in Izmir, 40 days, in Ankara, three months, in Istanbul, four months... These are the amounts of water remaining in dams. Bursa's Nilüfer Dam has already completely dried up. Elazığ's billion-dollar Hamzabey Dam, touted as "water-free until 2040," has bottomed out in just seven years. Water outages are now a daily routine in Izmir. In Uşak, the city's water supply dam dried up, and the outages were initiated, but the gold mine in the same city alone consumes more water than the entire city.
On one side, Egypt is fighting over the drops of the Nile in the middle of the desert, and on the other, Türkiye is losing the resources right under our noses…
In our country, measures are taken only when a crisis strikes. Palliative solutions are offered to save the day. But there's no system, no vision, no "future" for water. Billion-dollar dam projects are like makeup applied with shoddy materials; they flake off at the first heat wave.
However, in Egypt, a country with unparalleled development, water is a development strategy. Wastewater and seawater treatment are among the most important issues. In 2021, they opened the world's largest wastewater treatment plant. The Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation even coordinates all of this.
In our country, water management is fragmented among dozens of institutions. Networks experience a 19 percent loss, meaning nearly a fifth of water is wasted before it even reaches the tap.
Flood irrigation is still used in agriculture at a rate of 70 percent.
Rainwater harvesting, grey water use and recycling have still not gone beyond being pilot projects of a few municipalities.
As with everything else, the prevailing attitude is, "We'll manage somehow." But we can't.
Diken
