By Murat Yıldız
Türkiye has placed desalination inside its official water-security toolkit, but the country's water crisis still begins far from the shoreline. The harder problem is agricultural demand, energy cost and the river politics that come with being an upstream power in several regional basins.
Türkiye's National Water Plan 2026-2035 was published in the Official Gazette on March 14, 2026, turning a long-building pressure into formal state planning. Usable water availability has fallen to about 1,300 cubic meters per person a year, below the 1,700 cubic-meter threshold commonly used to define water stress.
Agriculture dominates that picture. Public summaries of the plan put agricultural irrigation at roughly 79 percent of Türkiye's water use, a figure broadly consistent with the Food and Agriculture Organization's global finding that agriculture accounts for about 70 percent of freshwater withdrawals worldwide. That makes the desalination debate narrower than it may first appear. Türkiye does not only need new water. It needs to decide where expensive new water can actually make economic and agronomic sense.
The plan lists investment in desalination technology and expanded reuse of treated wastewater in agriculture among its priorities. The research literature supports that approach only if desalination is treated as a targeted instrument, not as a replacement for irrigation reform, groundwater management or transboundary river diplomacy.
What the research says
The Food and Agriculture Organization has been studying desalination for agricultural use since at least 2004, when it convened an expert consultation in Rome. The resulting volume, edited by J. Martínez Beltrán and S. Koo-Oshima, remains a useful reference because its central finding still holds: desalination is technically feasible, but energy cost, brine disposal and crop suitability limit large-scale irrigation use.
Newer research has refined that conclusion rather than overturned it. A 2023 review in Agricultural Water Management argued that desalination for agriculture should be assessed through a climate-water-energy-food nexus. The technology is not simply good or bad. Its value depends on energy source, local water scarcity, crop choice, brine management and whether the project is designed for agriculture from the start.
Two 2026 studies show where the field is moving. In Plants, People, Planet, researchers led by Myrans examined the use of slightly saline water from emerging desalination technologies as short-term drought relief, using Tonga as a case study. The point is not that partially desalinated water can irrigate everything. The point is that salinity tolerance differs by crop, which makes desalination a crop-specific and location-specific tool.
A separate Nature Water paper described a solar-powered circular desalination system that links seawater treatment, crop irrigation and biomass reuse. The study is a proof of concept, not a deployed agricultural model, but it points toward smaller, decentralized systems designed around farming rather than municipal-scale plants retrofitted for irrigation.
That distinction matters in Türkiye's case. Desalinated water may help a coastal greenhouse, a high-value crop zone or a drought emergency. It is much harder to see it replacing conventional irrigation across the country's main agricultural basins.
Why the Gulf comparison fails
The Gulf comparison is useful because it shows what desalination can do under extreme scarcity. It is also misleading because Türkiye is not Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates or Qatar.
Saudi Arabia's renewable freshwater availability is far below Türkiye's, placing it in an extreme scarcity category. The kingdom relies on desalination for most of its drinking water, and Gulf Cooperation Council states together account for a large share of global desalination capacity. Gulf states have used cheap energy, sovereign wealth and large coastal plants to turn seawater into a pillar of water security.
Costs have fallen. Large reverse-osmosis projects under favorable financing, energy and scale conditions have pushed reported desalination costs sharply lower. Saudi Arabia's Saline Water Conversion Corporation reported a 2.27 kilowatt-hour-per-cubic-meter energy benchmark in 2021, part of a wider fall in reverse-osmosis energy intensity.
But lower cost does not make desalinated water a default irrigation source. Desalination generally remains more expensive than conventional freshwater or treated wastewater for farming. It also produces brine. A United Nations University-linked study found that roughly 16,000 desalination plants worldwide produced about 95 million cubic meters of freshwater a day and about 142 million cubic meters of brine, with Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait and Qatar accounting for a large share of that brine output.
The Gulf model is rational where alternatives are scarce. Türkiye still has rivers, reservoirs, groundwater, treated wastewater potential and irrigation-efficiency gains available, even under worsening stress. That gives Ankara choices the Gulf states do not have. It also means desalination has to compete against cheaper and more immediate reforms.
Türkiye's river problem is different
Türkiye's water policy cannot be read only as a domestic scarcity file. In the Euphrates-Tigris literature, Türkiye is often treated as an upstream water power, not as a Gulf-style desalination state.
The Southeastern Anatolia Project made dams, hydropower and irrigation central to Türkiye's control of the Euphrates-Tigris basin. Iraq's dependence on rivers rising in Türkiye has kept water inside the bilateral diplomatic file, including recent efforts to build an implementation mechanism for Iraqi water infrastructure projects. Former Iraqi President Barham Salih warned that Iraq could face an annual water deficit of 10.8 billion cubic meters by 2035, a forecast that shows why river flows remain a strategic issue between Ankara and Baghdad.
The Aras/Araks basin adds another layer. A 2026 Institute for Security and Analysis report argued that Türkiye's expanding dam network could give Ankara dominant control over parts of the basin, a claim also carried in Armenian regional reporting. That claim should be treated as an argument from the water-security literature, not as settled fact. But it underlines the larger point: Türkiye's water choices are not confined to domestic supply. They affect downstream states, regional agriculture, energy production and diplomatic pressure.
This is where desalination becomes strategically interesting but limited. It cannot replace hydro-diplomacy with Iraq, Syria, Armenia, Iran or Azerbaijan. It can only reduce pressure in specific domestic settings, especially where coastal agriculture, high-value crops and drought management justify the cost.
The agricultural test
Türkiye's livestock and crop economy has already absorbed the pressure of water stress, input costs and production shocks. Official Turkish Statistical Institute data show raw milk production fell 4.9 percent in 2025 and red meat production fell 10.5 percent. Those figures do not prove a direct desalination case. They show that water stress sits inside a wider agricultural cost problem, where feed, disease, herd management, irrigation and producer margins all interact.
Desalinated water is unlikely to reach livestock operations directly at scale. Its more plausible agricultural use is narrower: coastal zones, high-value crops, greenhouse production, short-term drought relief and crops with demonstrated salt tolerance. Treated wastewater reuse may often be more realistic for broad agricultural application, especially where infrastructure and public-health rules can support it.
That makes the National Water Plan's inclusion of desalination defensible, but only as part of a hierarchy. First comes demand management. Then irrigation efficiency, groundwater protection, treated wastewater reuse and crop planning. Desalination belongs in the toolkit after those choices, not before them.
The hard limit
Türkiye is right to study desalination seriously. The technology is becoming more efficient, renewable-powered systems are improving, and agricultural research is moving beyond the old assumption that desalination belongs only to drinking-water plants.
The constraint is not technology alone. Türkiye's water stress is driven by the scale of agricultural demand, the cost of changing irrigation systems and the diplomatic exposure that comes with upstream control of river flows in a drier region.
Desalination can help where geography, crop value and energy economics align. It cannot do the work of irrigation reform, groundwater discipline or river diplomacy. Türkiye's water problem is still being decided in fields, reservoirs and basins before it reaches the sea.
Sources: Türkiye's National Water Plan 2026-2035, Official Gazette, State Hydraulic Works (DSİ), Food and Agriculture Organization, Water Desalination for Agricultural Applications, Agricultural Water Management, Plants, People, Planet, Nature Water, United Nations University, Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK), Reuters, Arab Center DC, Institute for Security and Analysis, Bosphorus News review and reporting.