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Turkey, like most other Mediterranean countries, is an arid and semi-arid country. Turkey is also experiencing a population boom.

This increase in population has led people to boost agricultural production by cultivating marginal land. In fact, until 1970, increases in food crop production were caused mostly by increases in the area of land that was cleared and cultivated.

After 1970, with the help of more sophisticated techniques and more modern equipment, farmers aimed to conserve the moisture in the soil profile and produce greater yields by controlling the time of tilling, how many times a year soil was disturbed, and how deeply soil was cultivated. For a time; these new farming practices appeared to resolve Turkey's agricultural production problems. Between 1970 and 1990 while the area cultivated in wheat increased by only 9 % wheat production increased by 90 %. Nevertheless, Turkish farmers had much to learn about contending with periods of low rainfall, such as in 1989, when wheat production declined by 20 % from the year before. By the early 1990s, the increasing rate of production clearly showed that it was time to establish new guidelines for sustainable agriculture, particularly in the nation's dry regions. Indeed lack of rain during the growing season on the Central Plateau and other semiarid regions of Turkey poses the greatest challenge to the nation's agriculturalists.

To address the pressing need for water the Turkish government launched the Southeastern Anatolian Development Project in 1987. The project covers an area of 74,000 km(2), roughly equal to one-tenth of Turkey's land surface. The project consists of 13 subprojects on the Euphrates and Tigris rivers.