Paper short abstract:

This paper argues that the political can most often be found in the technical and invisible details of everyday life. I explore the trans-local and political negotiations that northern Cypriots cope with vis-à-vis the Turkish state's interventions, in relation to water infrastructure.

Paper long abstract:

In July 2016, the pipes and taps of northern Cypriots started to flow with 'Turkish' water. The "Project of the Century" is a pipeline that runs under the Mediterranean Sea, bringing clean water from Turkey to northern Cyprus and supposedly relieving northern Cypriots' everyday struggles of getting by with scarce, bitter and salty water. Prior to the arrival of 'Turkish' water, the controversy around its management had already ensued which raises the following questions: how does infrastructure constitute political subjectivities, and how do its technicalities reproduce certain ways of governing?

Ever since the military occupation by Turkey in 1974 and establishment of the de-facto state Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus in 1983, Turkish financial and provisional aid programs have become indispensable for northern Cypriot society. The water pipeline and its privatization is yet another scheme that renders the blurred lines of governance and sovereignty more visible. I inquire into how (Turkish and Turkish Cypriot) engineers and technicians, public officials in and around the Water Works department(s), and certain public figures perceive the politics of the pipeline and management of the water. These ethnographic insights reveal a crucial element of infrastructures in general; that these highly technical networks of utility and materiality spotlight and reveal different layers of the socio-political context. Therefore, this paper will argue that infrastructures' logistical, technical, and governing components offer insights on how political organizations are undermined or consolidated, how competing viewpoints are negotiated, and how power structures around the webs of relations are reproduced.