Water is a chemical weapon when it is withheld from people. Preventing thousands of people from having access to is chemical warfare. When Sarin gas killed people in Syria last year, it was the presence of the chemical that caused deaths. When people are murdered with thirst, they end up just as dead due to the absence of the chemical. The chemical is water. When it is withheld, people die.

Turkey: using water as a chemical weapon?

That appears to be exactly what the country of Turkey is doing by cutting off the flow of water from its end of the Euphrates River. The Euphrates flows from Turkey to Syria and on through Iraq into the Persian Gulf.

Along the river’s path through Syria sits Lake Assad, a key reservoir and water source in that country. According to reports, Lake Assad’s water level has been dropping rapidly and that Turkey’s Erdogan regime is the culprit:

Violating international norms, the Turkish government recently cut off the water supply of the Euphrates River completely. In fact, Ankara began to gradually reduce pumping Euphrates water about a month and half ago, then cut if off completely two weeks ago, according to information received by Al-Akhbar.

A source who spoke on the condition of anonymity revealed that water levels in the Lake Assad (a man-made water reservoir on the Euphrates) recently dropped by six meters from its normal levels (which means losing millions of cubic meters of water). The source warned that “a further drop of one additional meter would put the dam out of service.”

Ironically, this behavior on the part of Turkey bolsters the charges that it was behind the chemical weapons attacks in Syria in order to get the Obama administration and other NATO countries to contribute to the overthrow of the Bashar al-Assad regime. The charge is that the rebels were agents of the Turkish government to launch attacks and then blame Assad so air strikes could commence and the tide could turn in favor of the rebels.

That didn’t happen.

Now it appears that Turkey is using a different kind of chemical weapon – water.