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FightING ILISU DAM - SAVE HASANKEYF AND TIGRIS VALLEY |
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Welcome to the Homepage of the „Initative to Keep Hasankeyf Alive“ |
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Open letter of our Initiative to the governments of Germany, Austria and Switzerland (10.06.2009) |
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Initiative to Keep Hasankeyf Alive Istasyon Cad., Sümerpark Kampüsü, YG 21 Ev Yenisehir-Diyarbakir Turkey Fax: 0090-412 226 3065 http://www.hasankeyfgirisimi.com email: hasankeyfgirisimi@gmail.com
To 1: Mrs. Heidi Wieczorek-Zeul Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development Federal Republic of Germany
Mr. Karl-Theodor Freiherr zu Guttenberg Ministry of Economy and Technology Federal Republic of Germany
Mr. Frank-Walter Steinmeier Ministry of Foreign Affairs Federal Republic of Germany
Mr. Peer Steinbrück Ministry of Finance Federal Republic of Germany
To 2: Mr. Werner Faymann Federal Chancellor Republic of Austria
Mr. Josef Pröll Minister for Finance Republic of Austria
To 3: Mr. Hans-Rudolf Merz President of the Swiss Confederation
Mrs. Doris Leuthard Mrs. Micheline Calmy-Rey Federal Councillors of the Swiss Confederation
Copy to: Mr. Dr. Hans-Joachim Henckel Chairman of Interministerial Committee for Export Credit Guarantees / Germany
Mr. Dr. Hans Janus, Director of Euler Hermes Loan Insurance / Germany
Mr. Dr. Rudolf Scholten Österreichische Kontrollbank (OeKB) / Austria
Mr. Christoph Sievers SERV –Swiss Export Risk Insurance Switzerland
10.06.2009
Ilisu Dam project: Final decision on Ilisu Dam Project
Dear Ministers Mr. Glos, Mrs. Wieczorek-Zeul, Mr. Steinmeier and Mr. Steinbrück,
Dear Chancellor Mr. Werner Faymann and Finance Minister Mr. Josef Pröll,
Dear Federal President Mr. Merz, Federal Councellors Mrs. Doris Leuthard and Mrs. Micheline Calmy-Rey,
We appreciated with pleasure your decision about the suspension of the export credit guarantee for the Ilisu dam and hydroelectric project declared on the 23rd of December 2008. We regard this as a right step in the right direction. You should not staying involved in this project. Even if the Terms of References (TORs) are fulfilled, it will be never enough to bring the project to an acceptable level. So we demand from you to withdraw from the Ilisu project.
What we want from you essentially is to stay in line with your values on human rights, freedom expression, participation, transparency and sustainable development which you have developed in your past. We know exactly which development is good for us and which social-cultural losses are acceptable. And no dam project – independantly how economic it is – has the legitimitation to destroy the 12.000 years old city of Hasankeyf and our important Tigris valley with its inhabitants. Hasankeyf is the heart of the cultural heritage of our region! Your participation in that project would have the result that we would loose the trust in your policies. Despite of that we are sure that the Turkish government can not build this dam if you and the european companies of the Ilisu consortium withdraw from the Ilisu project. And that is not a technical or financial capacity question of the Turkish government or the participation of Chinese companies. If you withdrew Turkey would loose the legitimitation the own society for the project. Despite of that the campaigns against the destructive Ilisu project in Turkey are growing every day, the public opinion is always more interested and supporting in the civil society activities. A withdraw from your side would give more time to the public and affected people to strengthen their campaigns. The first time in Turkey such an interest has been developped in the saving of a world heritage. We are at a crucial point. We are aware that the Ilisu project is a project of the Turkish government and that the final decision on the construction will be done in Turkey. So let us carry out the struggle on the Ilisu dam in Turkey without any influence from abroad.
We want to emphasize that the developments after the suspension of the export credit guarantee have showed again the complexity of the problems and contradictions of the Ilisu project. Despite of that, the last developments have demonstrated that the Turkish government has not the will and the capacity to fulfill the TORs. So you should not say any more that the Ilisu project is a pilot project in implementing international standards. In order to achieve this you should select another dam project which has not too much negative impacts and more benefits. We have read the new resettlement policy for the Ilisu project which seems to a step forward. But it is foreseen only for the Ilisu project and as long as the ECA’s stay involved. At the same time other dams under construction are built according current Turkish criterias which have deep negative effects on affected people. In April 2009 the flooding of the Alpaslan 1 Dam on the Murat River in the province of Mus has displaced many hundreds people from several villages. At that time the most affected people did not get any compensation although DSI promised them so much. This is a new example for the unwillingness of the Turkish government.
The resettlement plans for the villages of the construction site are unrealistic and the people will suffer after resettlement. The change from subsistence farmers into market farmers is impossible because of missing education and knowledge, deep custom and social conditions in the region. Also the two hectares land are insufficient. The plan of planting almond trees or distribunting cows are problematic. However, one main problem with resettlement is that there is not enough suitable fertile land for the affected people. This can not be solved through any point of the TORs.
The expropriation process not according the TORs for the new planned Hasankeyf site is going on. The villagers Zübeyir and Abdurrahmen Topkan and other families from the Kesmeköprü II village have been expropriated in May 2009 by the district court of Batman. The case has been started in January 2009. This happened in the last six months, when the contracts were suspended. So how often Turkey needs to violate the TORs that you withdrew from the project?
The fact that the twelve monuments of the antique city of Hasankeyf can not be moved as promised is a very crucial development of the last weeks. As far as we are informed by excavators in Hasankeyf and even employees of the company Encon, probably maximum 3-4 monuments may be removed. Till today only the research on only one monument has been finished and even in that case it is unknown whether it is possible or not to move it. However, this would mean the loss of the cultural heritage of Hasankeyf will be bigger than planned – actually we never believed that a moving of the monuments will be possible. Based on that one big deception is becoming clearer. There will be no culture park close to the new resettlement cite and so there will be no opportunity for any income for the inhabitants of the new Hasankeyf. The result will be a ghost city whose inhabitants will flee to big cities where they will end in total poverty. And all promises and conditions will have no sense.
Instead of the Ilisu Dam, we as the affected people in the Ilisu dam reservoir area and region want a development which has Hasankeyf in the centre. You should understand that Hasankeyf is more than an archeological site. It is a very important part of our identity. The report “An Outstanding Value of Hasankeyf and the Tigris Valley” from April 2009 prepared by Prof. Zeynep Ahunbay and Dr. Özge Balkiz is underlying what we say for years. Hasankeyf and the Tigris Valley are fullfilling 9 of 10 UNESCO criterias; Hasankeyf is at least important as Venice, the Pyramides, city of Salzburg, Dresden or Bern. Is it possible that an infrastructure project could submerge these locations in your countries on behalf of economic development? This report brings into the centre that another alternative development is possible. In economic terms particularly for the province of Batman Hasankeyf’s touristic potential is extremely crucial because there is no other important touristic site. With such a cultural and natural heritage like Hasankeyf and the Tigris Valley a new approach could be started to be implemented in our region, a new chapter. A region which has suffered a lot in economic and politival way in the last decades. We want to decide on our own future and do not want to be “developed completely” by the central government which is far away to our concerns.
The affected people do not want the Ilisu project, whatever else the government officials (DSI) tell to the people. The negative social and ecological experience of many other dam projects has demonstrated the reality behind this “development” projects. Thats why the inhabitants of Hasankeyf have refused in the public meeting on the 15th of May 2009 to be part of a resettlement committe for the new Hasankeyf site. The effort to establish a committe of representatives from different public organizations and the ruling political party through appointments manifests the hopelessness of the project owners. Till today the inhabitants of Hasankeyf are still not informed really about their future when the dam is built. Also the established resettlement committees in the villages of the construction site is a desaster because the people in these committees are selected by DSI (State Water Works). They do not inform the others due to old problems (i.e. conflict on personal issues or land) in the village and so the committees increase the divides between the inhabitants in the villages. If the contradictions are not seen this can even lead to violance under certain circumstances among the people like it happened in the village of Bilge in the province Mardin where 44 people have been killed.
In the last months there were no meetings between the indirectly affected municipalities of Diyarbakir, Batman, Siirt, Bismil, Dargecit, Besiri, Kurtalan, Gercüs and the project owners of DSI about the different aspects of beeing affected. For examples about the waste water treatment plants, the danger of diseases – especially crucial for Batman – and about affected thousands of people who will move to their cities. So the municipalities do not know what is going to be happen although they are important stakeholders and dynamics in the region.
Did you ever take into consideration that also nomadic people are directly affected? There are up to 30.000 nomadic people (3000 families) with many thousands of animals who use the Tigris valley for resting in two winter months. The Ilisu dam would flood this area and would also make it more difficult to cross the river to two directions. Did you plan in the TORs anything for these nomadic people? As we can see nothing.
Despite of that the construction site is still forbidden for us. As the Initiative we can not enter the Ilisu and Karabayir villages because our campaigners are known by the military which has the main control in that area. As a result it is impossible to get information about the activities in the construction site which is very important for the public in the region and all other affected people. We want to ask: Where is the right for information and moving? Where are your claimed World Bank and OECD criterias to be fulfilled by Turkey? Rather the Turkish government continues to accuses the opponents of the Ilisu project as “seperatists or supporter of terrorism”. In last December the Turkish Minister for Environment and Forest, Veysel Eroglu, and in April 2009 the Turkish Prime Minister Recep T. Erdogan used this accusation which can not be the basis for any discussion. Erdogan said “Because of the terrorist organizations campaign the credit promises are at the end”. Here we want to ask you: Where is the claimed changing approach of the Turkish government through the implementation of the Ilisu project according the TORs? The Turkish government quitts any basis of rational argumentation and can not use any arguments any more.
The security situation in the provinces of the Southeast Turkey is continuing to be problematic due to the unsolved Kurdish question. So the armed conflict is going on and people die in an area which includes also the Ilisu dam affected region, especially the region between the construction site and Hasankeyf. Turkish military is bombing with aircraft and artillery currently every second day the Turkish-Iraqi border. Military activity can be seen even in the Ilisu dam affected area. This instability is affecting the whole region and is increasing the political oppression in the region. Since April 2009 more than 500 people have been arrested who were politically and peacefully active for the rights of the Kurds. In that context a very new development leads to many discussions. There are plans to build eleven dams directly at the Iraqi border (provinces of Hakkari and Sirnak) which are described as security dams by the Diyarbakir Chamber of Geological Engineers’ management board member Murat Hocaoglu. The physibility works for these dams were done by DSI in three months which is extremely short, no EIA Report is foreseen although the dams huge impacts. Usually this take some years. The affected people were not informed once. The construction process of these dams has started and the aim is to finish the construction works within 540 or 900 days. The official purpose is to produce energy, but in the implementing project plans no hydroelectric power plants are foreseen. But the concern is that they will be used as a weapon to solve the Kurdish question in the militaristic logic. This procedure shows once more that there is no real wilingness to change the approach in building dams or other infrastructure projects, particularly if in the affected area is a political conflict.
On the international level we have heard that Turkey is still not informing Iraq and Syria sufficiantly on the Ilisu dam. In one of the technical meetings among these three states, which has been done in Turkey in 2008, the Turkish government refused to speak about the Ilisu project. This is an open violation of the TORs. What do you know about that?
The protest in whole Turkey raises against destructive dam projects. The 5th World Water Forum in Istanbul in March was an event which was protested by many civil organizations and movements. The Turkish security forces reacted extremely violantly and arrested many peacuful protesting people on the 16thof March 2009. Due its negative impacts and complexity Ilisu was a main subject in these days at the World Water Forum. On the 6th of June 2009 a demonstration has been organized against destructive dams by dozen of civil organizations and dam critical movements in Ankara. This shows among other things that the Ilisu dam is not accepted by the majority of the society in Turkey. And that in such a level that even always more artists openly criticizes the Ilisu dam project. Besides the most famous Turkish popstar Tarkan the Nobel Prize winner for Literature, Orhan Pamuk, has demanded to declare Hasankeyf as a Unesco world heritage site.
We are sure that in the last months and weeks the Turkish government has presented you many new plans and has given many promises. Do you trust a government which has violated openly, regularly and consciously in the last two and half years the TORs? A government which presents you in last minute nice plans should not be confidential. It is a government which does not look for a any dialog with the affected people and local authorities.
This is our last call to you!!! As long as there is time, you have to withdraw from the Ilisu project which we would describe as one of the worst cases of dam projects worldwide. If you continue to give credit guarantee you will be faced with the eligible allegation to destroy highest civilisation culture of Mesopotamia, destroy the last big river ecosystem and and to send ten thousands of people directly to the poverty.
Kind regards
Nejdet Atalay, mayor of Batman, and Ercan Ayboga On behalf of the Initiative to Keep Hasankeyf Alive (consisting of 73 organizations from the Ilisu dam affected region)
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