Birhan has moved with his wife to live a self efficient life in the valley 9 years from now. He was fed up with almost everything in the city life. The greed, the competition, the injustice, politics, religion and a sick sick society. Birhan and Tuğba have worked for quite a bit after finishing university and have already lived all their lives in Istanbul. Until one day they decided that was it and took off to India. They didn't have much money and they have never been luxury freaks. So they traveled on basics and stayed at peoples houses instead of hotels. Running on a tight budget they managed to stay in India for a year, where they were inspired by the modest life styles of local Indian communities in different parts of the country.
They knew before they returned that they would not be able to live in the city anymore. They were certain they couldn't return the system, they did not want to contribute to it "buying their ignorance with their money" as Birhan described it in the script, which I have justed completed translating from Turkish to English, of an upcoming documentary of Bingol Elmas that will touch upon on the issue of Hydroelectric power stations in Turkey besides other ecological rural and urban concerns and their affects on people lives, mainly building on the story of a young couple: Birhan and Tuğba.
Though the issue has not been given the public attention in deserves through the Turkish media, it remains a major crime committed in Turkey against nature and the ecological system in different locations throughout the Anatolia region where such stations are built, let alone the destruction of a number of important archeological sites such as Hasankeyif and Halfeti.
What is happening is that a corporation decides to produce Hydroelectric power. Hydroelectric power is produced by water power. So, to get water with a flow strong enough to produce power you need to gather massive amounts of water in a pool, let the water run over a massive concrete dam, forming a massive waterfall.
Well it might all sound just OK. But let us take a closer look. What is happening here is this: to gather that much water you need to dry up a multiple number of rivers in the region. So as a corporation you lobby with the government and you buy the land, that might have been untouched for over 60 years and inhabited by people with simple lives, including the rivers in that given land and ignoring the people as if they did not exit. Next, you suck the water out of rivers through massive pipelines you build on land that has remained untouched until you and your machinery stepped in. The rivers dry as your greed grow and as all the animals, plants and other species and therefore you die, as the river dry! What part of the picture don't you really get?
People who have lived efficient and simple lives around these rivers for generations, can no longer stay. Where there is no water, there is no life. They never had enough money to buy the land. They were just there farming it and making simple and modest livings. But now the corporation owns the land, there is no water and they are forced to leave. Yet, they resist! They protest and through stones at representatives of multinational corporations, they sing for land and seeds and flowers while men in suits look down at their funny looks and show them documents sealed by ministries of environment and forestry saying they own the land, the rivers and the water! They own the means to human lives whom all they wished for is to be left alone in peace.
People are forced to move to cities, to live in urban ghettos and to serve as brand new cheap labor force, only to later become once again victims of urban planing and development projects, but that is another long long story.
Dried rives and vanishing natural and human lives on one side, there is yet another darker side of the rusty dirty coin, the smallest representative of the monetary bloody system. While water is gathered on one side drying up rivers, it floods other locations in massive amounts enough to cover entire villages and archeological sites and remains of civilizations of the Anatolia that might have stood there for hundreds if not over a thousand of years. Goes without saying that people of flooded villages are also forced to move to join the destiny of people of dried rivers in dirty city ghettos, with no access to public services and hardly any culture at all.
Birhan says: I live here and I listen to the noise of bulldozers wiping out the land around me with all the life within it everyday, the man in the city doesn't here them. You are damn right Birhan! We do not hear them because they are long gone after they have swept everything away. We are left here living in boxes and buying food rapped in trees and dried rivers and dead turtles and bees. We hardly hear them bulldozers, but for whatever the good it might do, this is just to let you know that the noise of the destruction that we have caused is earsplitting! I wonder how they still do not hear!?!
P.S
I haven't spoke to any of the people involved. My information is based on data I personally collected through the internet and through the text of the documentary mentioned above that I have translated from Turkish to English. I have rephrased comments of people involved as I remembered them rather than quoting their exact words. It is important to underline that the aim here is not to report some news as the issue is quite an old one and is far from being news anymore, it yet remains an emergency. I simply got steamed up at the whole thing and it inspired me to write what I have written above.
So for more information you should look up:
http://www.alakirnehri.org/AN.html the website is not without its problems but scroll down, click the album, scroll down again and you can click on the pictures to listen to the album that the Alakır River Movement have recorded to finance the expenses of their resistance.
http://alakirnehri.blogspot.com/ (Turkish)
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=251511550556 Brotherhood of Alakır River page on Facebook
http://www.sonirmak.org.tr/sido/ this is the website of an independent orchestra named Son Irmak (Last River), their concert locations and music is very impressive
Let the rivers flow...
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