FightING ILISU DAM  - SAVE HASANKEYF AND TIGRIS VALLEY

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News about Delegation visit to Brussels in 2005

 

'Europe Information Environment Daily' (30/06/2005)

EU/TURKEY: CALL TO MONITOR ILISU DAM PROJECT

Representatives of the Hasankeyf/Diyarbakir region, in south-east Turkey visited Brussels, from June 17 to 22, in a bid to draw EU officials' attention to the plight of their region and not least the historical city of Hasankeyf, which is under threat because of a plan to build a new dam on the river Tigris. The delegation regards its petition as forming part of Turkey's EU membership bid, and under this heading is urging the Community authorities to monitor the project, particularly in the light of EU environmental protection and human right rules. The delegates claim the rules are not being applied and this is what prompted them to turn to the European Commission's relevant services and MEPs with a call to launch an in-depth investigation.

The Ilisu dam (a major hydro-power project) is located in south-east Anatolia, a Kurdish region. The 138-metre-high dam is due to produce 3800 GW/hour of electricity. Nearly 78,000 people will have to be displaced and the historical town of Hasankeyf flooded. The experts claim the project will cause serious environmental pollution, along with health problems and could reduce the river flow downstream, in Syria and Iraq. The two neighbouring countries have apparently not been consulted. The delegation members also stress that the project is located in a region where there is a heavy crack-down on the Kurdish community. The need to take account of this historical conflict and obvious human rights violations in the region are just two of the issues involved in the controversy surrounding the initial project and its impact study. The original project incurred the wrath of the international community when it was assessed by a consortium of European companies in 2000 and 2002, owing to the serious economic, social, environmental and cultural concerns it raised. The consortium decided in the end to drop the project. A new consortium, led by the Austro-German VA TECH/Siemens group, agreed to resume the project in 2004.

(AME)