Did Ankara Begin Increasing Water Releases in the Tigris River?

Iraqi Member of Parliament, Thayer al-Jubouri, stated today, Monday, that the flood waves in the Tigris River are the first fruits of the meeting between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Iraqi officials in Baghdad. Al-Jubouri told "Baghdad Today" that "Ankara has effectively begun to increase the rate of water releases in the Tigris River, which has led to a noticeable rise in its levels and has prompted an increase in releases from the Mosul Dam towards the river basin to direct it to other areas and push part of it to the storage basins based on paths approved by the Ministry of Resources." He added that "the increase comes after the agreements made during the Turkish president's visit and a broad meeting with the Iraqi government in Baghdad, which included efforts for cooperation in the development road file culminating in increased water shares." He emphasized that "water shares among the bordering countries do not require agreements but rather the implementation of legal provisions that ensure fairness for all countries in having their water shares." He confirmed that "what Ankara has done is not a discretionary action or benevolence, but rather the application of an international law signed by most countries in the world." He noted that "Iraq's water situation now is better than the past five years, and the four waves of floods have enhanced the storage of its dams, but they have not reached the point of fullness, and there remains a significant storage deficit." The Ministry of Water Resources had announced the successful passage of a flood wave from the Mosul Dam to Lake Tharthar, where the water releases in the Tigris River from the Mosul Dam were raised from 1,000 to 1,200 cubic meters per second for a duration of two days.