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.