Le projet GAP de la Turquie : au-delà du développement
The GAP or “South-Eastern Anatolia Development Project” in Turkey is one of the vast development projects in the world, consisting of the construction of 21 dams and 19 hydroelectric centers on the Euphrates and Tigris rivers.   However, this project posed many controversies during the last decade both at the national level, with the Kurdish question, and at the regional level, because of the issue of sharing water with neighboring countries, notably Syria and Iraq. Nevertheless, this subject was debated in most cases exclusively from the perspective of the Kurdish conflict issue. The objectives of my dissertation are to understand the use of the GAP project by the Turkish government in the national and political constructions of Turkey in 1930 and 1980 with the aim of sovereignty and national power. This analysis is carried out in a more general framework of geopolitics and political history. Drawn on work of geopolitics and power, and especially on theories of national construction, this dissertation focuses mainly on the evolution of the GAP project, as well as its instrumentalization in the national construction of 1930 and the political and national reconstruction of 1980.
Güneydoğu Anadolu Projesi (GAP) Nation Building Mustafa Kemal Turgut Özal Geopolitics History-politics South-East Power Turquism