Paving Paradise to Put Up a Power Plant

türkçe links to original Turkish article

(HaberTürk Newspaper, 29 December 2017)


          This is called "progress", right?

In Amasra district of Bartin province, members of the Bartin Platform
group and villagers are protesting the uprooting of olive trees for the
construction of a thermal power plant.  Ten months ago a 2-acre 
olive tree grove between Gömü and Tarlaağzı villages was purchased
and the other day 139 of the olive trees were uprooted.

In response, Zeliha Atav (63) declared that "this company first hired
our children and then they threatened us, saying 'if you don't give us
your land, we'll fire your kids.'  They didn't say 'we're building a power
plant', they just hoodwinked us.  We don't want a thermal power plant!"


                                     Ouch!

Prof. Dr. Erdoğan Atmış, who spoke on behalf of Bartin Platform, said
that "the environmental application for the Hema Thermal Power Plant
they want to build was rejected 5 times because the site is inappropriate.
Nevertheless, they applied again and in October 2016 they somehow
finagled a favorable outcome. In the successful environmental report
the negative effects of the power plant on the environment and peoples'
health have been discounted, or it is implied that the company will 
eventually address them."

İlyas Börekçi, the deputy chief of the company in question, Hattat
Holding, responded by saying that "there was an effort in 2000 to
encourage olive groves here but it was determined that the climate
conditions weren't right.  We've been in touch with the Olive Grove
Institute and we trimmed the trees (!) in a way they recommended.
We took out 60 trees, together with soil, wrapped the roots in cloth
and sent them to Izmir.  There are about 100 trees in the field that have
begun to degrade so they're not worth transplanting."