ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq – The Green Iraq Observatory on Sunday accused Ankara of not delivering on its promises in aiding Baghdad with its water shortage crisis, asserting that Iraq’s negotiation attempts with Turkey to solve the water shortage issues have “failed miserably.”

“The Iraq Green Observatory acknowledged the failure of the negotiations recently conducted between Iraq and Turkey to address the water file and its scarcity within the country,” the observatory remarked in a statement.

After a meeting with Ankara on Saturday, the Iraqi foreign ministry said that both sides have come to an understanding to develop solutions for Iraq’s water crisis.

The environment monitor labeled the attempt “unrealistic and futile,” stating that Baghdad’s efforts to obtain a larger share of water from Ankara have “failed miserably,” since Turkey “makes promises but does not fulfill them” throughout all the meetings regarding the water crisis that bring the two states together.

It warned that “Turkey has refused for decades to sign any agreement to secure Iraq's water rights.”

The organization argued the crisis in Baghdad means “many interests have been achieved” for Ankara, who are trying to make Iraq “beg” for water releases, noting that the water supply formerly used to produce food sufficiency is now withheld by Turkey and used for agriculture and food production that is then exported to Iraq to compensate for the lack of food production.

Iraqi authorities in July announced that Turkey had agreed to release an additional 420 cubic meters of water per second to Iraq from the upstream portions of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

Despite the flow of the Tigris and Euphrates within its territory, Iraq has been struggling with dangerously low levels of water due to the withholding of water from upstream countries, causing hundreds of families from southern provinces to emigrate and the deterioration of water quality.

The Green Iraq Observatory warned in early September that Turkey’s dam network had drastically reduced Iraq’s water inflows, intensifying an already severe crisis. Turkey has built about 20 dams over four decades, holding roughly 80 billion cubic meters of water, eight times the capacity of Iraq’s Mosul Dam.