Description
The interface between water, infrastructures, and power has long been contested. The hydro-social scholarship has demonstrated that water, water infrastructures, and society (re-)make each other. Moving beyond imagining infrastructures solely as material entities, critical infrastructure scholarship has also demonstrated that infrastructures and society shape each other. These studies have been extended to examine the relationship between infrastructures and regions, concluding that infrastructures and regions also (re-)make each other. Drawing on the triadic relationship between water, infrastructures, and regions, we aim to examine how regional factors, dynamics, and complexities shape (the politics of) water infrastructures, and how water infrastructures shape (the politics of) regions. We aim to demonstrate this linkage by focusing on the history of regional planning and hydraulic infrastructure development in Turkey, particularly on how the South-eastern Anatolia Project (GAP) and south-eastern Turkey have shaped each other since the 1970s. We focus on both the national and transboundary dimensions of the development and management of the Euphrates and the Tigris and their implications for the south-eastern Turkey and the Euphrates and Tigris Basin. Thus, we seek to promote ‘water regionalism’ as a novel approach to examine the dynamic relationship between regions and water infrastructures at a variety of scales.
