The Stones Will Give Way: Diplomacy and Water Infrastructure in the Soviet-Turkish Borderland

Abstract: This article explores the formation of East Anatolia as a modern borderland. It traces the history of joint water management along Soviet Armenia’s border with the Turkish Republic from the 1920s into the twenty-first century. Chief among these infrastructures was the Akhurian Reservoir Dam, whose construction straddled— and flooded—that border in the 1970s and 1980s. The Akhurian Dam (Arpaçay in Turkish) and its predecessors are noteworthy not only for spanning an international boundary but for doing so in a region often associated with imperial conflict. Indeed, except for Norway, Turkey was the only NATO member that directly abutted Soviet territory. What enabled water cooperation in East Anatolia to cross borderlines, socioeconomic regimes, and Cold War blocs? This article argues that the border zone developed patterns of engagement that reflected, but were not in lockstep with, official relations between Moscow and Ankara. These local patterns deepened over time, such that they survived even the Soviet collapse and reignition of Armenian-Turkish rivalry in the 1990s. Three continuities sustained water diplomacy in the Aras River Basin. The first was a transborder commitment to statist agricultural development. Despite their differences, Soviet Armenia and Turkey adopted similar approaches to irrigating East Anatolia’s arid plainlands. The second was a tension between the economic benefits of cooperation and the border’s chief purpose: security. These conflicting priorities partially insulated borderland interactions from ruptures in metropole diplomacy. And the third continuity was a set of ground-level institutions and infrastructures that empowered water managers to shape their countries’ foreign policies while pursuing their own local agendas.