Lethal Effects, Now And In The Future

It is only logical that when people are dying in Turkey as a result of violent actions by the state they belong to as a citizen, these abuses get the attention they deserve from those media still able and willing to critically follow Turkey's elected officials.

It is the reason why, against all odds, brave journalists are reporting about what is happening in the cities in the Southeast where a curfew has been imposed. It is a sad story of ordinary Kurdish citizens being squashed relentlessly between security forces and terrorist gangs; of a state sowing the seeds for a new generation of alienated youngsters willing to sacrifice their lives fighting authorities that have lost all credibility; of a terrorist organization abusing appropriate Kurdish demands for more rights to wage a war that will not produce any positive results and will cause only more death and destruction.

In the shadow of those tragic events, for the most part unreported by Turkey's mainstream media, there is another, non-violent and less spectacular struggle taking place in several parts of Turkey that deserves to be highlighted as well. It is the growing resistance among local populations against plans and projects that will have a very negative influence on their quality of life and, in some cases, will cause their premature death.

In Cerattepe, Artvin, the local population revolted against plans to open a new mine. They wanted to protect the special ecosystem of the eastern part of the Black Sea, prevent future landslides and protect the quality of their springs. For the moment, despite the massive use of security forces, their resistance has been successful and the construction work has been halted. Local activists have announced they will only stop resisting when and if the whole project is abandoned and the government acknowledges the specific value of Artvin's nature and geography and forbids any further construction.

Two weeks ago, a meeting took place in Hatay to warn against the dangers of another planned project with potentially devastating effects: the building of 16 new coal power plants in the İskenderun Bay region. The event was initiated by the Health and Environment Alliance (HEAL), a leading European not-for-profit organization addressing how the environment affects health, together with several local environmental NGOs and chambers of medicine.

Turkey is among the countries with the biggest coal power investment plans in the world. The government is planning to double its coal power capacity over the next four years. For the İskenderun area, that would mean that, on top of the already existing four thermal power plants, another 16 coal power plants would be built. Environmentalists and medical experts have now joined forces to sound the alarm over the extremely negative health effects of these plans. Even without the 16 new plants, the situation in the region is already extremely worrying. Six of the eight official local air quality monitoring stations show levels well above both Turkey's national standards and those of the World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines values. This means, simply put, that 6 million people living in this region regularly breathe in air that is considered harmful to health. The construction of 16 additional plants will only create more problems.

Doctors and public health specialists at the meeting agreed that they consider their action to prevent new coal power generation in and around the area to be a medical duty. As the chair of the Adana Chamber of Medicine, Professor Neslihan Önenli Mungan, formulated it thus: “Due to heavy metal pollution and acid rain that these coal power plants will cause, we will have to face an increasing burden of diseases of the allergic respiratory system, chronic lung conditions, cardiovascular diseases, different kinds of cancers as well as children born with anomalies and underdeveloped brains.”

At the meeting HEAL launched a toolkit that will help concerned citizens all over Turkey to take action against new coal power plants by providing information on Turkish legislation and by showing how health impact can be put into an environmental impact assessment.

Let's hope other Turkish citizens get inspired by these positive initiatives, and demand proper information about the lethal effects of current government policies, now and in the future.

Joost Lagendijk (Cihan/TZ)