Cycles of technopolitical transformation and (de)politicisation in water infrastructure: Insights from the Atatürk Dam

Aybike Alkan
Independent Researcher, Berlin, Germany; aybike.alkn@gmail.com

Arda Bilgen
Middle East Centre, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK; a.bilgen@lse.ac.uk

ABSTRACT: Large dams are often portrayed as technical achievements that advance economic development, energy production and regional integration, yet they also embody political struggles over expertise, authority and development priorities. This article examines the Atatürk Dam, Turkey’s largest hydraulic infrastructure project, as a technopolitical intervention rather than merely an engineering structure. It asks how technical expertise, institutional arrangements and technopolitical strategies have shaped the dam’s governance, and how processes of politicisation and depoliticisation have influenced the framing of its hydrosocial, hydropolitical and politico-ecological implications. Drawing on archival sources, interviews and documentary analysis, the article argues that the governance of the Atatürk Dam did not move from technical design to political controversy in a linear trajectory; rather, it evolved through recurrent and co-constitutive processes of politicisation and depoliticisation, as competing actors continuously contested expertise, institutional authority and scalar governance. In doing so, the article reconceptualises politicisation and depoliticisation as intertwined technopolitical processes and demonstrates how large-scale water infrastructures both materialise and mediate political conflict.

KEYWORDS: Atatürk Dam, depoliticisation, politicisation, technopolitics, water infrastructure, Turkey