Irrigation and conflict: evidence from Kurdish separatism in Turkey

This paper leverages a large-scale dam construction project in Southeastern Turkey
to test the hypothesis that climactic shocks play a causal role in civil conflict. I use
original 5km and 10km gridded datasets on irrigation and Kurdish separatism for the
period 1985-2019. Exploiting exogenous topographical variation in the distribution
of irrigation schemes, I find that conflict incidence and insurgent recruitment decline
significantly in grid cells following the introduction of irrigation. Yields for all major
crops except irrigated cotton are highly sensitive to rainfall, and clashes are more
frequent following a poor harvest. However, the effect of irrigation on conflict is strongly
mitigated by land inequality.