The Struggle Over Hasankeyf

PHOTO from Today's Zaman

From Today's Zaman's Yonca Poyroz Dogan:

Hasankeyf, which is under threat of being submerged because of the construction of Ilısu Dam on the Tigris River, is the only place in the world that meets nine out of 10 criteria to be included on the UNESCO World Heritage List, according to respected scientists who recently gathered in the town, one of the oldest and continually inhabited places on earth.

“We have gathered reputable scientists to prove that Hasankeyf should be included on the UNESCO World Heritage List,” said Güven Eken, who heads the Nature Society (Doğa Derneği). In order to be included on the World Heritage List, sites must be of outstanding universal value and meet at least one out of 10 selection criteria. The Great Wall of China fulfills five criteria, while Egypt’s Memphis and its Necropolis -- the field of pyramids from Giza to Dahshur -- fulfill three and India’s Taj Mahal meets only one criterion.

The Nature Society’s efforts together with Atlas magazine led to the gathering of about 60,000 signatures from people in Turkey including celebrities such as superstar singers Tarkan and Sezen Aksu and writers Yaşar Kemak and Orhan Pamuk. Their signatures in support of protecting Hasankeyf will be sent to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who will have to decide whether the Culture and Tourism Ministry will make an application to UNESCO.

Representatives of the Nature Society, scientists and Tarkan met with Culture and Tourism Minister Ertuğrul Günay last April and introduced a report that explains in detail how Hasankeyf can be a candidate for the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Criticizing the government’s decisions to construct dams on sites that are protected by law, Eken said as those “illegal” projects start to be built, locals and the civil society would challenge them in court.

One promising decision was taken last week by the Council of State, which overturned previously given authority to the State Waterworks Authority (DSİ) in response to a court case filed by several civil society organizations.

“The Environment Ministry is guilty,” Eken said. “Even if the dam is completed, it will not be able to hold water according to the Council of State’s ruling.”

The decision also pleased the representatives of the Initiative to Keep Hasankeyf Alive. Recep Kavuş from the initiative said the Council of State’s ruling states that the DSİ cannot have authority over cultural values. The site was declared a natural conservation area in 1981.

March. On March 22 this year, 200 people planted approximately 60 trees close to the Tigris River under the slogan: “By planting trees in Hasankeyf and the Tigris Valley we sow hope and life.”

The initiative has also been struggling because there are many financial supporters for Ilısu Dam. Although they have had several campaigns demanding responses from the three Turkish banks that support the construction of the dam, they have not received a response, Kavuş said.

Prime Minister Erdoğan said in February that the construction of the dam and a hydroelectric power plant on the site would continue. He also said the consortium that has undertaken the project had found necessary financing after a group of European credit agencies last July withdrew their financial support for the project, asserting that it did not meet environmental standards for preservation of cultural heritage, and relocation criteria for moving the villagers.

Three Turkish banks, Akbank, Garanti and Halkbank, will provide $430 to $500 million toward the estimated $1.7 billion cost of the dam.

Turkish officials say the 1,200 megawatt dam will help reduce the country’s reliance on energy imports and eventually bring in money from tourism and fishing. Ilısu Dam is part of Turkey’s Southeast Anatolia Project (GAP) -- an economic development program for the country’s poor southeastern corner. The $32 billion project will build more than 20 dams and 19 hydroelectric plants to boost irrigated agriculture in the arid region.

Construction started in August 2006, and the dam will swallow up more than 80 villages and hamlets by the time of its planned completion in 2013.

One other challenge to the construction of the dam has been going on since 2006 at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

The above story also describes in detail the ways in which Hasankeyf meets the UNESCO criteria to be considered a World Heritage site. In February, Prime Minister Erdogan again voiced support for plans to build the dam and a hydroelectric plant on the spot. With European backing for the project now out of the question, the government has turned to the Chinese to finance the project. See also this vivid description of Hasankeyf by Today's Zaman's Kursat Bayhan, which the prime minister has never visited.

For more on Ilisu, see posts of Dec. 20 and July 26.

Turkey Ratifies Kyoto

From TDZ:

Parliament approved on Thursday its membership of the Kyoto protocol, the U.N.-led pact to combat global warming.

Turkey had announced in June its intention to sign the accord, which was first agreed by world governments in 1997. The government had postponed signing it for more than a decade because of its concerns about the cost on its economy.

Parliament’s ratification comes after intense pressure from both the European Union and international environmental organizations. Three voted against as 243 lawmakers voted in favor of the protocol.

Environment Minister Veysel Eroğlu in a brief speech he made after Thursday’s vote to ratify the protocol said, "I thank you all. Everyone should embrace this protocol," He said the government was taking necessary precautions for a better environment in the country.

Environmentalists say Turkey has been late in participating in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and in ratifying the Kyoto Protocol. Turkey can no longer become a "party" to the protocol, so it has now "acceded" to it. Signing the Kyoto Protocol does not put an additional burden on Turkey until 2012, analysts said. Turkey was not a party to the convention adopted in 1992 when the Kyoto Protocol was negotiated, and it is not currently included in the agreement's Annex-B, which includes 39 countries that are obliged to reduce their greenhouse emissions to 1990 levels between 2008 and 2012.

The Kyoto Protocol was open for signatures in 1998, and entered into force in 2005 with the accession of Russia. More than 170 countries have signed the protocol. Governments around the world are trying to shape the next term by holding international meetings and work will be concluded in 2009, analysts said.

According to Environment and Forestry Minister Veysel Eroğlu, the cost of readying Turkey for compliance after 2012 is 58 billion euros, 15 billion of which is expected to be carried by the private sector. The Turkey Industrialists and Businessmen's Association (TÜSİAD) has endorsed ratification on grounds that it will enhance Turkey's role in energy negotiations to come and bring Turkey closer to entering the EU. For additional news analysis from TDZ, click here.

Environment and Human Rights Concerns Defeat Ilısu Dam

PHOTO BY Carolyn Drake/The Walrus

From the Guardian:

Insurers delivered a victory for environmentalists and dealt a body blow to Turkey's economic regeneration plans yesterday by pulling the plug on a bitterly contested dam project that critics claimed would wreck habitats, displace people and drown ancient archaeological treasures.

A consortium of German, Austrian and Swiss insurance firms ordered a halt to the £1.1bn Ilisu dam in Turkey's impoverished south-east after concluding that it failed to meet standards set by their governments and the World Bank.

The decision means suppliers underwritten by the insurers will have to stop work on the dam, located by the banks of the Tigris near Turkey's borders with Iraq and Syria, for 180 days and casts doubts on its long-term viability.

Environmentalists, heritage organisations and human rights groups campaigned against the project claiming it would have meant the loss of around 80 towns, villages and hamlets and the destruction of large areas of farmland. They argued that the mainly Kurdish local population had not been properly consulted and that between 50,000 and 80,000 people would be forced from their homes without compensation.

Heritage campaigners also claimed that the project would flood ruins from ancient Mesopotamia in the town of Hasankeyf and other sites, which are believed to contain evidence of 100,000 years of human occupation.

For full article, click here. The proposed dam has long been controversial, and has had both human rights and environmental groups mobilized for some time. There were concerns earlier this year that the German government might block the dam's construction. Hasankeyf was featured in an issue of the Atlantic this past November. See also Yigal Schleifer's earlier reportage of Ilısu, and the Southeastern Anatolian Project (GAP) of which it is part. The AKP had sold the project on the grounds that it was vital to the economic development of the Kurdish southeast, though it is likely a majority of Kurds opposed it.

Also happy will be Turkey's southern neighbors, Syria and Iraq, which had both expressed anger at Turkey's decision to dam the valuable water of the Tigris.

Hasankeyf in the Atlantic

From The Atlantic:

Life moves slowly in Hasankeyf, a town on the banks of the Tigris in the heavily Kurdish region of far southeastern Turkey. Geography and political unrest have kept the modern world largely at bay. During my recent visit, Ali, a local artisan, demonstrated his trade for me—weaving rugs on a loom built by his grandfather, working in a room hewn from the limestone cliffs by a more distant ancestor.

Then the 21st century intruded, in the form of a lumbering Ankara Express bus. A group of Chinese tourists filed out, then stood in silence, absorbing the centuries of history before them. Archaeologists believe Hasankeyf may be one of the oldest continuously inhabited settlements in the world, dating back some 10,000 years. The cliffs lining the river are speckled with gaping black holes—homes carved out of the soft rock by cave dwellers thousands of years ago. What remains of a citadel built by the Byzantines in the fourth century A.D., and later expanded and reinforced by the Artukids and Ayyubids, rises above the city. Other ruins show the influence of Assyrians, Romans, Seljuks, Mongols, Ottomans—successive waves of conquerors who fought for dominance of the lucrative trading routes in northern Mesopotamia.

Hasankeyf may soon be hit by another conquering wave—this time, a watery one that could drown its history. Fifty miles downstream, near the village of Ilisu, a consortium of German, Swiss, Austrian, and Turkish contractors is preparing to build a massive hydroelectric dam that would catch water from the Tigris just before the river spills into Syria and Iraq. If all goes as planned, most of Hasankeyf will be submerged by a reservoir. Ali pointed out the projected waterline—about halfway up the spire of a 15th-century minaret.

For more on Hasankeyf and the Southeast Anatolia Project, see Sept. 3 post.