国际英语资讯:Spotlight: Turkey, Iraq agree to work together to address regional water issues_时事

国际英语资讯:Spotlight: Turkey, Iraq agree to work together to address regional water issues

Experts, nevertheless, hailed the step taken by Ankara and Bagdad and their resolve to tackle the difficult issue.

"This is a positive step in the right direction and also in line with the long-standing cooperation over water development since the 1946 Treaty of Good Neighborly Relations between Iraq and Turkey," Muserref Yetim, a Turkish scholar in the Program in International Relations at New York University, told Xinhua.

However, there was no quick fix to the water contention between Ankara, Bagdad and Damascus under the current circumstances, said Yetim, who is a expert on water issues.

"The end of the Syrian civil war is a precondition that seems hard to achieve in the short and medium terms. In the long run, emergence of accountable and transparent governments at the Euphrates-Tigris Basin will facilitate the sustainable and environmentally sound water resource management," she noted.

As one of the most water-rich countries in the Mediterranean, Turkey, though, has been facing dramatically decreasing availability of water resources over the years with a population of some 82 million as well as droughts and climate change.

Turkey is building eight dams on the tributaries of the Tigris and 14 on Euphrates tributaries for its Southeastern Anatolia Project, which has incensed downstream countries.

Iraq says after defeating the Islamic State militant group in 2018, water is crucial in restoring peace and stability as more than 80 percent of the nation's water goes to agriculture which provides a livelihood to more than a third of its population.