Environmental Issues
The environmental issue that is affecting Southwest Asia.
What is water scarcity?
This narrow, strategic waterway connects the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea and is a vital route for international oil shipments.
What is the Strait of Hormuz?
Saudi Arabia is governed by a king whose power is unlimited and inherited through royal birth, making it this specific type of government.
What is an absolute monarchy?
Following its defeat in World War I, this massive empire collapsed and was carved up into new nations by European powers.
What is the Ottoman Empire?
Located west of Saudi Arabia and east of Egypt, this long body of water connects to the Mediterranean Sea via the man-made Suez Canal.
What is the Red Sea?
Turkey built a massive network of dams along these two historic rivers, significantly reducing the downstream water flow into Syria and Iraq.
What is the Euphrates and Tigris River?
Located between Jordan and Israel, this extremely salty body of water sits at the lowest elevation on land in the world.
What is the Dead Sea or Jordan River?
Citizens in Israel vote for political parties to elect members to their parliament (the Knesset), which then selects the prime minister. This makes Israel this form of democracy.
What is a parliamentary democracy?
The United States led a coalition force in the 1991 Persian Gulf War (Operation Desert Storm) to liberate this small, oil-rich country after it was invaded by Iraq.
What is Kuwait?
When a government imposes a complete ban on trade with a specific country—such as political restrictions placed on Iran or Iraq in the past—it is using this type of trade barrier.
What is an embargo?
Because rainfall is extremely low across Southwest Asia, farmers rely heavily on this process of artificially supplying water to crops to grow food.
What is irrigation?
Starting in the mountains of Turkey, these two major rivers flow parallel through Iraq before emptying into the Persian Gulf.
What is the Tigris and Euphrates River?
In this democratic country, citizens directly elect a president who serves as both the head of state and head of government with broad executive power.
What is Turkey?
This political movement, which gained momentum in Europe during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, called for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
What is the Zionist movement?
In a parliamentary democracy like Israel, the head of government is chosen by members of the legislature rather than by this group.
What are the citizens?
Countries like Israel and Saudi Arabia use this expensive process to remove salt from ocean water so it can be used for drinking.
What is desalination?
Starting in the mountains of Turkey, these two major rivers flow parallel through Iraq before emptying into the Persian Gulf.
What is the Suez Canal?
While citizens in Israel and Turkey enjoy voting rights and political freedoms, citizens in this nation have minimal role in choosing their supreme leaders or national policy.
What is Saudi Arabia?
Worldwide sympathy following this mass murder of 6 million Jews during World War II dramatically increased international support for establishing the State of Israel in 1948.
Following the end of World War II, this international organization voted in 1947 to partition Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states, leading to the creation of Israel in 1948.
What is the United Nations?
This intense political and environmental conflict arises when upstream nations build dams or divert water, restricting the flow of a shared river to downstream countries.
What is water rights?
This nation is located on the Anatolian Peninsula, bordering both Europe and Asia, and controls the source of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.
What is Turkey?
In a parliamentary democracy, the chief executive is chosen from within the legislative branch, whereas in a presidential democracy, the chief executive is chosen in this specific way.
What is directly by the citizens?
This 1916 secret agreement between Great Britain and France divided up control of former Ottoman territories in the Middle East, setting up the system of European mandates.
What is the Sykes-Picot Agreement?
This stateless ethnic group of roughly 30 million people was left without an independent country when post-WWI borders were drawn, leaving them spread across Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria.
What are the Kurds?