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This paper proposes a simple two-person game of one-sided incomplete information in extensive form to understand strategic choices made in the Turkish-Syrian linkage between water and terrorism. Turkish intelligence established Syrian support of a terrorist group that aims at an independent Kurdish state in eastern Anatolia. Yet, Turkey frequently stipulates the cessation of this support for negotiating with Syria a water agreement over the Euphrates. The game presents Turkey as a player having superior information. Syria is assumed to be uncertain about Turkish preferences with respect to the mutual conflict. This analysis identifies three pooling equilibria indicating that Syrian beliefs do not matter.

Chapter 9 The issues of water and territory dominate relations between Syria and Turkey, upstream and downstream riparians in the Euphrates and Tigris basin. This chapter propose an evolutionary game to explore eventual trajectories of riparian relations. Turkish hawks are defined as those Turkish foreign policies that support no water concessions. Turkish doves can instead support the flow of an increased amount of water to Syria on the basis of an international agreement. Syrian hawks are those Syrian foreign policies that do not recognize Turkish sovereignty over Hatay—also known as the Sandjak of Alexandretta. Syrian doves can in turn accept that the territory belongs now to Turkey. It is found that evolutionary stability does not depend upon the values territory and water represent for the fitness of Syrian and Turkish foreign policies. No evolutionary stability is possible unless doves are cooperative towards hawks. If doves are cooperative towards hawks, the unique evolutionarily stable outcome implies their extinction. Riparian relations will ultimately evolve into mutual intransigence.

Conflicts over the delimitation of territorial waters are abundant around the globe. Greece and Turkey, two NATO allies, are no exceptions. The delimitation of territorial waters and continental shelf, the status of islands, islets, and flight control zones and corridors in the Aegean Sea constitute constant sources of friction between them. We offer an evolutionary game model to explore for directions their relations can take including chances of new crises and the revision of the status quo. We find that crises constitute a norm in bilateral relations of the two littoral states. The crisis equilibrium indicates routinized practices involving first displaying then falling back. Hence aggressive behavior can be periodically observed but the current status quo will persist. A revised status quo becomes a likely prospect only if both countries were posited as single unitary actors maximizing their expected utilities.

This chapter investigates possible alliances between Turkey, Syria, and Iraq in their dispute over water in the Euphrates-Tigris basin. A noncooperative game in extensive form models Turkish-Syrian interactions related to water and terrorism. Iraq is modeled as a dummy player having no choice in the game but benefiting from Turkish-Syrian concessions. A Turkish-Syrian alliance cannot target Iraq, as the latter has no means of reducing the water volume upstream. The equilibria of the game explain the current state of the conflict by providing two different rationales. A unique equilibrium stipulates the conditions for a Turkish- Syrian cooperation. Turkish-Iraqi and Syrian-Iraqi alliances are found to be formed to balance threats in the basin.

[No abstract available]