AKBELEN FOREST
Mining company uproots olive trees in Muğla as locals protest, attacked by security guards
Photo: Ayşegül Kasap/Twitter
Click to read the article in Turkish
People in Milas, Muğla in western Turkey have been struggling for three years to prevent the construction of a thermal power plant, which would severely damage the Akbelen Forest.
Yesterday (March 31), workers of a mining company uprooted 30 trees in İkizköy village for an open pit coal mine project that the company wants to open to supply coal for the planned power plant, daily BirGün reported.
CLICK - İkizköy olive groves opened to mining without expert examination
After hearing of the uprooting, locals and environmentalists came to the area to prevent it. They were reportedly attacked by private security guards working for YK Enerji, a joint affiliate of the Limak Holding and IC Holding, two business groups with close ties to the government.
The gendarmerie then came to the area and detained several protesters while the company had to stop the uprooting.
Locals who have been keeping a watch in Akbelen Forest decided to increase patrols following yesterday's events, according to BirGün.
Before heading to the area, Nejla Işık, the spokesperson of the İkizköy Environmental Platform, said, "While the annulment lawsuits we filed to protect our olive fields and forests continue, we learned that the centuries-old olives in our fields are uprooted," as quoted by Anterhaber news site.
"They are doing this in accordance with the new regulation published on March 1. However, they don't have the right to do this. We are going to the area to prevent the uprooting of our trees ... Five or six villages in Muğla have been evacuated for mines. Their history, culture and nature have been destroyed."
The olive regulation
The government on March 1 issued a regulation allowing mining sites to be opened in olive groves. Several NGOs and lawyers' groups have taken legal action against the regulation that clearly violates the Olive Law.
According to Law no. 3573 on Improvement of Olive Growing, no facilities that emit chemical waste and produce dust and smoke cannot be built and operated within 3 kilometers of olive groves, except for olive oil factories.
About a week after the regulation was issued, the YK Enerji company officially asked villagers in İkizköy to "cut down or remove the trees."
Today, the company tried to plant the uprooted trees elsewhere in the region, showed a video shared on Twitter by Ayşegül Kasap, a reporter for Diken news portal:
YK Enerji dün köklerine zarar vererek söktüğü ağaçları şimdi dikmeye çalışıyor!
— ayşegül kasap (@aysegul_kasap) April 1, 2022
İkizköylüler YK Enerjiye seslendi: "Dün bu zeytinleri katlettiniz. Ne yapsanız doğaya ve yaşama karşı işlediğiniz bu suçu örtemezsiniz." pic.twitter.com/TEzuunAvKE
What happened?The Akbelen Forest in Muğla's Milas was cut down in order to provide the Yeniköy Kemerköy Thermal Power Plant operated by the LİMAK Holding with lignite. The villagers of İkizköy, where the forest is located, have been waging a struggle in the face of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry permission to open a lignite mine in the 740-decare Akbelen Forest. Villagers and environmentalists sued the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and the General Directorate of Forestry by applying to the Muğla 1st Administrative Court. Receiving the defense of the administration, the court ruled for an expert examination in the forest. Not waiting for the court ruling, the Directorate General of Forestry came to the forest with excavators on July 17 and started cutting trees. In response, the people of İkizköy filed a criminal complaint against the officials of the Directorate General for "misconduct in office." The cutting of trees stopped thanks to the struggle of the villagers, who put up tents and started keeping watch at the entrance of the forest. In the lawsuits filed against the cutting of trees in the Akbelen Forest in Muğla's İkizköy in Milas, the administrative courts granted motions for the stay of execution. The decision of "No Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is necessary" was also canceled. The people of İkizköy welcomed the decisions given by the Muğla 3rd Administrative Court and the Muğla 1st Administrative Court. While the former gave a decision of stay of execution for the EIA Exemption for the Integrated Facility, the latter halted the execution of the cutting of trees. The courts also requested the expert examination in the Akbelen forest. |
(EMK/VK)