A project to build a dam which will wipe out scores of Kurdish towns and villages and destroy a site of international archaeological interest is to be underwritten by the British government to the tune of £200 million, despite the World Bank refusing to touch the project.
Balfour Beatty, the company which was the lead contractor in the ill-starred Pergau Dam project in Malaysia, is being supported by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) in its bid to build the Ilisu dam in Turkey - despite the fact it would contravene both the British Foreign Office's ethical policy and Foreign Secretary Robin Cook's recently announced environmental aims.
The proposed dam is on the Tigris River, 40 miles upstream of the Syrian-Iraq border, in the heart of the Kurdish populated area. It will produce hydro-electricity and will be used for irrigation. Demand for electricity is increasing by 8 per cent a year in Turkey and frequent power cuts are inhibiting economic growth.
The reservoir will flood 52 villages and 15 towns, including Hasankeyf, a Kurdish town of 5,500 people and the only town in the region of Anatolia which has survived since the Middle Ages. The town was awarded archaeological protection by the Turkish government in 1978.
Mr Tony Juniper, of Friends of the Earth, said: "We have to stop this project before the British government is party to fomenting war in the Middle East, destroying part of the homelands of the Kurdish people and major environmental destruction."
The World Bank has refused to have anything to do with the $1.6 billion Ilisu dam project. The bank believes the project violates the UN convention aimed at preventing border disputes and wars between states that share water resources. Turkey was one of three countries which opposed the convention when it was passed by the UN General Assembly in 1997. The danger is that Ilisu could be used for political blackmail: Turkey could stop the flow of fresh water into Iraq and Syria simply by closing the dam's sluices.
When the Turkish government failed to get the backing of the World Bank it appointed a Swiss hydro-electric company, Sulzer Hydro, and ABB Power Generation, a Swiss-Swedish company, to organise the project. They approached Balfour Beatty to head the construction consortium. Work is due to start later this year.
Sources at the Foreign Office were said to be furious that the DTI was going ahead with the project without consulting them. A Foreign Office spokeswoman said the DTI was the lead department on the project but "we support and encourage them to ensure environmental concerns are taken into account in assessing all projects and have encouraged them down this track".