Paper short abstract:

This paper investigates how a network of water pipelines reflects the political engagements that the communities they supply have with states, local governance systems, and with people's senses of time and belonging.

Paper long abstract:

The paper takes as its ethnographic focus the context of north Cyprus and the recently built water pipeline running underneath the Mediterranean and connecting the Turkish mainland's freshwater resources to the Turkish-occupied territories of the island of Cyprus. I understand this incoming, supposedly clean and drinkable water not just as an object of political contention, but also as something that accentuates northern Cypriots' present conditions of dependency and inability to 'act upon' governing themselves, and reflects their imaginations and anticipations of an uncertain future.

Water infrastructure and its governance have been at the center of everyday political discussions in north Cyprus when it comes to interrogating notions of willpower, sovereignty, and taking matters into their own hands. These discussions among locals oscillate between expressions of incapability and incapacity—what I call the lethargic present—to govern the pipeline infrastructure, and aspirations of reclaiming their willpower in an uncertain future. Relying on ethnographic data, I present people's articulations of time, specifically impermanence, and uncertainty regarding water infrastructure. The temporality of infrastructure constitute the analytical focus for this paper; I interrogate how the Turkish state-funded water pipeline system encapsulates the conjunction between Cypriots' past appreciations, present grievances, and future expectations for themselves vis-à-vis the Turkish state. As such, I discuss how infrastructures invested with clear ambitions for the future can become material manifestations of contested pasts and presents. I contend that the incoming water and the network of pipelines engender new questionings of their lethargic present and uncertain future.