On the morning of August 26, the breakage of a rapidly melting glacier in Nepal caused a major flood: More than 930 people died and approximately 4 thousand people disappeared. While it may seem like a distant tragedy, no food, water or climate crisis is truly far away today. Floods in Nepal, drought in India, declining fish stocks in Peru, drying lakes in Turkey, burning forests, and heat waves in Europe are all links in the same chain. Among the links in this chain are those I mentioned in my Monday article.
CIVILIZATION AND ITS CRISIS
The great danger for capitalist civilization is not a single drought or war, but the simultaneous outbreak of many crises. And so it happens.
According to the August 2026 assessments of international climate research institutions, the probability of experiencing a very severe El Niño this year is over 90 percent. In the November-December period, there is a 69 percent probability of the most severe El Niño occurring since 1950. The World Food Program estimates that this could push an additional 49 million people into acute food insecurity by the end of 2027.
Reducing the anchovy catch quota in Peru by 36 percent increased the prices of fishmeal used as animal feed by nearly 90 percent in six months. The El Niño effect also causes losses in coffee, wine grapes, palm oil, sugar and rice production. We may not yet be at the "systemic breakdown" point predicted by the Pentagon in its 2003 report, but food and production costs are rising, and economic and health risks affecting farmers are increasing.
While global warming reduces the limits that agriculture can withstand, El Niño accelerates the deterioration in rainfall and temperature regimes. Wars aggravate this process. The carbon footprint of the destruction in Gaza and Ukraine, the fuel consumption of armies and air transportation fuel global warming. The Iran war and the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz increased the energy, fertilizer and logistics shocks. The cost of water, fertilizer, diesel and transportation increases before the product grows in the field. Of course, the data centers on which Artificial Intelligence is based also have water and energy requirements that compete with humans.
AND Türkiye
Türkiye is not outside this global chain. In the 2025-2026 drought, wheat production decreased by 15 percent to 16.3 million tons. Although the 2026 harvest is expected to increase to 24.5 million tons, this fluctuation does not solve structural problems. Türkiye is approximately 90 percent dependent on foreign sources for fertilizer and diesel inputs. After the Iran war, fertilizer prices increased between 8.3-26.5 percent; The liter price of diesel increased from 61.41 lira to 75.12 lira and exceeded 85 lira in August.
The main problem is in water stocks. Usable water per capita in Turkey is approximately 1,300 cubic meters; 79 percent of the water used is consumed in agriculture. Excessive use of groundwater in the Konya, Gediz and Büyük Menderes basins brings economic and social risks. NASA's data also shows that the withdrawal of water from many of the world's large aquifers exceeds the natural renewal rate.
The regime's neoliberal policies left farmers defenseless against the market. While the state's price and input support declines, farmers; It has turned into an actor with no bargaining power against world prices, imported inputs, exchange rates and large buyers. The cost shocks of the climate crisis, El Niño and wars are hitting this weakened producer structure. The shelves in the markets are not empty yet, but this situation may change if the farmers withdraw from production and the food regime becomes more dependent on imports, exchange rates and world markets.
Going back to the rings of the chain, the report on "Sudden climate change and national security" prepared by the Pentagon 23 years ago predicted that states could turn to harsh security policies in the face of mass migration, epidemic, food and water shortages. The transformation of the climate crisis into a security problem could turn the necessity of "survival" into a source of legitimacy for "state of emergency" practices, border closures, and even wars.
