Poppy ecologies and security in Eurasia: lessons from Turkey's past and present (original) (raw)
Related papers
The opium poppy in Turkey: alternative perspectives on a controversial crop
Focus on Geography, 2011
Featured today in American newspaper reports and televised news programs, the opium poppy is a symbol not only of heroin addiction in America but also of NATO’s ongoing and intractable campaign in Afghanistan. Although Afghan President Hamid Karzai dramatically declared ‘‘a jihad’’ against the crop in December 2004, revenues derived from its cultivation continue to finance both the insurgency and those corrupt elements within the Afghan state itself – which reportedly include even the president’s own half-brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai. Depicted in these contexts, many Americans understandably regard the poppy as a ‘‘dangerous’’ crop. Although this article does not seek to confront directly how the opium poppy is implicated either in substance abuse or in the enduring geopolitical conundrum of Afghanistan, it does challenge this singular depiction of the crop as found in the media today by analyzing the very different case of the opium poppy in Turkey. In doing so, it underscores the value of alternative perspectives and approaches in dealing with the challenges both of drugs and drug crops and of associated matters of geopolitical insecurity.
“Poppies are democracy!" a critical geopolitics of opium eradication and reintroduction in Turkey
Geographical Review, 2011
Historical scholarship in traditional geopolitics often relied on documents authored by states and by other influential actors. Although much work in the subfield of critical geopolitics thus far has addressed imbalances constructed in official, academic, and popular media due to a privileging of such narratives, priority might also be given to unearthing and bringing to light alternative geopolitical perspectives from otherwise marginalized populations. Utilizing the early-1970s case of the United States’ first “war on drugs,” this article examines the geopolitics of opium-poppy eradication and its consequences within Turkey. Employing not only archival and secondary sources but also oral histories from now-retired poppy farmers, this study examines the diffusion of U.S. anti-narcotics policies into the Anatolian countryside and the enduring impressions that the United States and Turkish government created. In doing so, this research gives voice to those farmers targeted by eradication policies and speaks more broadly to matters of narcotics control, sentiments of anti-Americanism, and notions of democracy in Turkey and the region, past and present.
Poppy Fields in Afghanistan: Implications for the Development of a Healthy Agriculture
This chapter is to describe the problem of growing, processing and traffic of illicit drugs in Afghanistan with a realistic look at its social causes and effects along with a brief history of opium and cannabis production in Afghanistan. With such a background, the implications of opium problem on any plan to help rebuild and restructure Afghanistan's economy can be better understood as the general view of the authors is to redirect the agricultural potentials in north Afghanistan towards a healthy stage that can lead to near self-sufficiency in provision of food for the area's residents.
Flower of War: An Environmental History of Opium Poppy in Afghanistan
Afghanistan’s opium production has soared despite eradication efforts. This is partly due to a prolonged drought linked to climate change. But it is also due to the collapses of traditional irrigation systems and the social cohesion upon which the maintenance of those systems depend. This crisis, in turn, raises deeper questions about prevailing notions of the “natural” and the “social” as dichotomous and distinct.
Traditional ecologies of the opium poppy and oral history in rural Turkey
Geographical Review, 2011
Cultivated in the Eastern Mediterranean region for millennia, the opium poppy (Papaver somniferum) was profoundly significant in the economies, ecologies, cultures, and diets of the peoples of many towns and villages of rural Anatolia. When the United States compelled Turkey to eradicate cultivation of the plant in the early 1970s in order to diminish the flow of heroin into America, farmers were obliged to deal with not only changes in their incomes but also profound changes in their relationships with the land and the state. Although Turkish officials later allowed production to resume in a highly controlled manner for pharmaceutical purposes, significant socioeconomic and ecological dimensions of Turkey’s poppy-growing communities were forever changed. Interviewing now-retired poppy farmers, I employ oral history as my primary source of historical evidence to reconstruct these past ecologies and associated social relationships and to give voice to the informants.
Prohibition on Opium Poppy Cultivation in Afghanistan
Central Asia
Afghanistan is home to the largest illicit drug industry in the world. The depth, influence, and impact of its narco-economy remain unparalleled. Illicit drug production has become a dominant feature of Afghanistan’s landscape. The opium economy is pervasive and deeply entrenched. Afghanistan's opium economy has become the source of security rather than the state. Therefore, the degree of dependence on the opium economy has thus become unprecedented in the modern history of drug production. The dependence means any immediate attempt toward opium poppy prohibition/eradication will result in political and socioeconomic crises not only in Afghanistan but the transit states in the region as well. In context of narco-economy, this paper expostulate that the construction of security in traditional and nontraditional discourse are linear, i.e. detached from reality or suffers from moralistic constraint, and therefore, needs to be revisited in line with ground reality of Afghanistan and...
Opium poppy cultivation and drug trafficking have eroded Afghanistan’s fragile political and economic order over the last decades. Notwithstanding the ongoing counternarcotics efforts by the Afghan government, the United States and other allies, Afghan remains the source of over 90 percent of the world’s illicit opium production (Blanchard 2009). Opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan is widespread across the provinces of the country, with a large part of the population benefiting from its production, processing, and trafficking. Many researchers attribute the booming state of opium economy in Afghanistan to weak governance, strong local warlords, years of war and the obvious impoverishment of the population. While government suffers the ugly effects of these problems including capacity incapacitation and conflicting tensions in policy choices, it is the overwhelming believe of the stakeholders in the Afghanistan post war reconstruction project that the opium poppy production undermines the country’s economy and sovereignty which in turn, weakens efforts to build an effective, accountable national state (Felbab-Brown 2007: 2). This is the reason for the foundation and application of an array of proposals under the umbrella approach called ‘counternarcotics strategy’. However, can the application of the plan effectively suppress the opium boom in poverty stricken, politically volatile and local warlords dominated Afghanistan? Importantly, are the benefits of suppression of illicit opium much more than the benefits derivable from its licit production for the much needed medicinal purposes? This paper argues that since counternarcotics policies are frequently of limited effectiveness in suppressing illicit drug production, licencing of opium poppy production in Afghanistan for useful medicinal and other useful purposes will have positive national development impacts, and that, it is much more cost-effective in achieving these outcomes. This is because, since the state would no longer have to engage itself in the herculean task of eliminating the population’s means of livelihoods in the licensed areas, the hostility of the population to the government would be drastically reduced and then, the legitimacy of the state would be enhanced. The paper holds the view that the benefits accruable from legitimizing opium production in Afghanistan, backed by stringent bureaucratic and legal measures are likely to outweigh the difficulties associated with the current ineffective but costly control measures. Therefore, given the robust evidence of the importance of opium production in the Afghan’s microeconomic sector, attempt at its forceful suppression, is counterproductive and inimical to the country’s stability and economic growth.
Given the current desperate state of both the counter-narcotics and counter-insurgency efforts in Afghanistan, there is little to lose in trying to implement Poppy for Medicine in the country. This proposal foresees the local production of an Afghan brand of morphine to boost the rural economy and diversify it over time. Poppy for Medicine does not pretend to completely wipe out illegal opium production. Instead, it aims to integrate as many poppy farmers as possible within the legal economy and cut off the biggest possible amount of income from the Taliban’s funding base.