A Comparative Analysis of Türkiye and Iran

Doğa Alşahin

Department of Political Science and International Relations, Başkent University

Ankara, Türkiye  |  dogaalsahin@gmail.com

Introduction

Water is a critical resource for personal and national survival, underpinning energy production, agriculture, and economic development. As global population grows, freshwater demand increases while supply remains unevenly distributed, turning scarcity into a recurring social, economic, and security problem (Malthus, 1798, pp. 13–14; Ullman, 1983, p. 141). When water is scarce, competition for limited supplies can lead states to treat water access as a matter of national security (Gleick, 1993, p. 79). Rather than framing security purely in military terms, this paper follows the view that non-military threats—including resource scarcity—deserve serious analytical attention (Ullman, 1983, p. 129).

Environmental scarcity has already contributed to conflict in Central and South Asia, Central Europe, and the Middle East, where disputes over water extend back millennia (Gleick, 1993, p. 80). Weak or authoritarian states facing scarcity-induced unrest may experience gradual weakening and disintegration (Homer-Dixon, 1994, p. 36). This paper argues that water scarcity should not be understood solely as an environmental challenge, but as a security issue that undermines food security and drives migration in Türkiye and Iran, with broader implications for national stability. Through a comparative analysis, it examines how similar environmental pressures produce different security outcomes depending on governance capacity.

Türkiye: Agriculture, Food Security, and Migration

Türkiye is officially classified as experiencing water stress, using between 40 and 80 percent of its available freshwater supply, a threshold beyond which competition over water intensifies. Droughts are increasingly observed across southern, southeastern, and western Türkiye, and are expected to intensify with climate change (Bagherzadeh & Shigemitsu, 2021, p. 4). The Turkish Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry has reported that drought impacts have already overwhelmed roughly 435,000 farmers, with estimated agricultural losses reaching 1.8 billion Turkish liras (World Bank, 2016, p. 7). Agriculture is the country’s largest water user, consuming roughly 74% of its 44 billion m³ of annual freshwater use, yet Türkiye’s water productivity remains low compared with high-income countries—about US$20 per m³ versus US$47 (World Bank, 2016, pp. 7, 14).

This gap suggests the problem lies not only in scarcity but in inefficient use. Regions such as the Konya Closed Basin, which contains Lake Beyşehir, face some of the highest freshwater stress in the country, compounded by poorly designed irrigation infrastructure that produces uneven water distribution. Türkiye has taken steps to modernize irrigation and improve drought monitoring under its national Drought Strategy (Bagherzadeh & Shigemitsu, 2021, p. 30), but existing practices remain insufficient relative to the scale of the problem.

Limited access to modern irrigation constrains farmers’ ability to adapt, threatening food security—defined as reliable access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food. Because water and food security are closely linked, water scarcity translates directly into livelihood risk, particularly for the rural poor, elderly, and women (FAO, 2012, p. 22). These pressures increasingly drive migration: agricultural employment fell from 23% to 18% of Türkiye’s workforce between 2008 and 2018, alongside a decline in agriculture’s share of GDP from 7.4% to 5.8% (Delacrétaz et al., 2023, p. 12). Migration functions as a household risk-management strategy against agricultural instability (FAO et al., 2018, p. 21), but it does not eliminate insecurity—rather, it transforms environmental stress into new forms of urban vulnerability, precarious employment, and gendered labor-market exclusion, particularly for women who previously worked as unpaid family labor in agriculture (Republic of Turkey Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, 2021, p. 28; Güleç, 2009, pp. 18, 40, 60, 64). Migrants arriving in cities such as Istanbul, Izmir, and Antalya are often classified as “unskilled,” a label that devalues their labor and leaves them exposed to poverty, particularly in old age (Güleç, 2009, pp. 60, 64).

Iran: Governance Failure and Water Bankruptcy

Iran faces a more severe crisis, often described as “water bankruptcy,” in which demand structurally exceeds supply (Madani, 2014, p. 315). Groundwater resources have declined due to climate change, rapid and uneven population growth, insufficient agricultural policy, and mismanagement (Madani, 2014, p. 315). The crisis has deep roots: water-intensive agriculture expanded from the 1930s onward and was further strained by the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the 1980–1988 Iran–Iraq War, while subsequent sanctions limited investment in modern water technology (Climate Diplomacy, n.d.). While climate change and international sanctions are frequently cited by the government, researchers attribute most of the crisis to decades of mismanagement, disorganized planning, and an aggressive dam-building program—Iran built more than 300 dams even while under sanctions and at war with Iraq (Madani et al., 2016, pp. 1001, 1006–1007).

Lake Urmia, once the largest lake in the Middle East, has nearly dried up due to periodic drought and excessive upstream diversion; roughly a quarter of its decline is attributed to dam construction, compared with about 10% to reduced precipitation (Madani, 2014, p. 315; Gemenne et al., 2014, p. 68). Its disappearance threatens public health, food security, and the livelihoods of over 13 million people in northwestern Iran (Schmidt et al., 2021, pp. 2159–2160; Haji & Haghighi, 2026). Some scientists describe Iran as approaching “Day Zero”—the point at which water supply systems cease to function—a form of harm that becomes nearly irreversible on human timescales (Kowsar, 2026).

The security implications became explicit during the 2018 Khuzestan protests, where demonstrators demanding safe drinking water were met with what Amnesty International described as unnecessary and excessive force by Iranian security services (Amnesty International, 2018, p. 2). Agriculture consumes about 92% of Iran’s water despite a shrinking share of GDP (Madani, 2014, p. 320), and recent FAO data show 2025 cereal yields more than 10% below the five-year average, driven by drought and overexploitation in provinces such as Khuzestan (FAO, 2026, p. 1). Food insecurity affects an estimated 68% of rural and 63% of urban households in Khuzestan (Rajab-Kalantarzadeh & Savari, 2025, p. 11), while the continued drying of Lake Urmia could eventually displace 4 to 14 million people, with women, the elderly, and rural farmers most exposed (Gemenne et al., 2014, pp. 72, 78). Migration flows increasingly concentrate in already water-stressed cities—metropolitan Tehran alone holds over 14 million people, or 18% of Iran’s population (Madani, 2014, p. 319).

Conclusion

Although Türkiye and Iran both face escalating water stress, their security outcomes diverge sharply due to differences in governance capacity and institutional resilience. Türkiye’s adaptation strategies and irrigation investment offer some capacity to mitigate future risk, despite persistent vulnerabilities. Iran, by contrast, illustrates how weak governance and decades of poor water management can transform an environmental problem into a full security crisis—marked by declining agricultural output, food insecurity, public unrest, and mounting pressure on already fragile urban centers.

Water scarcity should therefore be treated as a multidimensional security issue rather than a purely environmental one. As climate pressures intensify, both countries need governance reforms that strengthen water management institutions and address food security directly. Policy attention should also extend to those unable to migrate despite worsening conditions—involuntary immobility deserves the same consideration as displacement. As Homer-Dixon (1994, p. 31) argues, population movement is rarely a direct consequence of environmental scarcity; rather, it results from the poverty and livelihood insecurity that scarcity produces.

Policy Analysis: Water Scarcity as a Political Failure

Water scarcity in Türkiye and Iran is not only an environmental event—it is political. As this comparison shows, the shortage is worsened by political failure: uncoordinated dam construction, weak irrigation policy, and poor governance turn a natural condition into a security and humanitarian crisis. Governments must act now to reform water management and protect the people who bear the cost of this failure.

This is a condensed version of an article originally published as:

Alşahin, D. (2026). From Water Scarcity to Insecurity: A Comparative Analysis of Türkiye and Iran. MEF Journal of International Politics (MJIP), 4(2), Global Governance section.