Dur­ing a canoe trip I took two years ago from Bor­deaux to the World Coun­cil meet­ing on water in Mar­seille, I for­mu­lat­ed a wish: “Water, forests, ani­mals, human beings, and the Earth will find their free­dom thanks to solidarity!”


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Despite all the neg­a­tives, despite the “heirs” of the Left plac­ing obsta­cles in our efforts for anoth­er world, there is a way out. I am con­vinced that the younger gen­er­a­tions, with their own dynam­ics, their own ways and inven­tiv­i­ty, along with the ancients who lis­ten to them polite­ly and under­stand them, will be in the lead­er­ship with their com­bined tal­ent to under­stand and defend life. It is thanks to their sol­i­dar­i­ty that the bad days will pass and resolve them­selves in life’s favor, which is to say in favor of water, lands, forests, ani­mals and humans.

Being moti­vat­ed now for the final stages that will be played out on our exhaust­ed and seri­ous­ly wound­ed plan­et will car­ry our new vital reflex­es toward the true beau­ties of the Earth.

All it takes is a refusal to resign our­selves to the con­di­tions imposed by the thugs, ene­mies of the plan­et. In all cricum­stances, there are still actions each per­son, each group can per­form to the Earth­’s benefit…A bit every­where, there are fronts fac­ing the thugs and widen­ing their web, in Mun­zur, in Hasankeyf, in Alakır, in the Black Sea region, on Mount Ida – Kaz­dağları, but also in the Ama­zon, Hon­duras, in Dako­ta, in India, in Bolivia… Thanks to “water sol­i­dar­i­ty”, in the near future, all these areas will become “water democ­ra­cies”. It is through this byway through water that I send once again my greet­ings, sol­i­dar­i­ty and friend­ship to all these struggles.

And I under­stand bet­ter today, in observ­ing the resis­tance around Mount Ida-Kaz­dağları, that I am not mis­tak­en. In the hope that this strug­gle will open the way to resis­tance and future sol­i­dar­i­ties, and in order to car­ry the enthu­si­asm of these days of resis­tance at Kaz­dağları on to oth­er regions, I share this inter­view I con­duct­ed with the “Friend­ship of Mount Ida — Kaz­dağları” with you, friends of life.

kazdaglari
Click to enlarge

NOTE FROM KEDISTAN

Mount Ida, Kaz­dağları in Turk­ish, is a moun­tain range of and alti­tude of 1 774  meters, serv­ing as the bound­ary to the region of Troy. Since July 26 2019, thou­sands of peo­ple have mobilised to protest a gold min­ing project car­ried out by a Turk­ish sub­sidiary of the Cana­di­an firm,  Alam­os Gold.

Ecol­o­gists have denounced this project for its destruc­tive­ness of a pre­cious ecosys­tem and also warn against fur­ther envi­ron­men­tal and san­i­tary dis­as­ters linked to the use of cyanid in order to extract the gold, thus pol­lut­ing the lands, water­ways and under­ground water reserves. More­over, satel­lite images revealed that, as of begin­ning of August, bull­doz­ers had already torn up over 195 000 trees, in oth­er words, four times more than anticipated…

A peti­tion demand­ing the imme­di­ate stop to this project has already received more than 500 000 sig­na­tures. You can also con­tribute, by fol­low­ing this link


Kazdaglari Alamos Gold

• Let’s start with the sto­ry of Friend­ship of Mount Ida. Why, where and how did you come togeth­er and what have you done so far?

Friend­ship of Mount Ida came togeth­er in order to pro­tect and defend the life of all liv­ing beings against all attempts such as mines and pow­er plants that may harm the ecosys­tem and nat­ur­al cycle. Some of us have been liv­ing in dif­fer­ent regions of Çanakkale for a long time and some of us for a few years. We were already friends before com­ing togeth­er as a col­lec­tive. We decid­ed to take action togeth­er after we attend­ed the Pub­lic Infor­ma­tion Meet­ing of Çamyurt Project, one of Alam­os Gold’s oth­er projects in the region. We do not have a his­to­ry of eco­log­i­cal strug­gles as a col­lec­tive, but we have tak­en part in oth­er strug­gles as indi­vid­u­als before. There is a lot of infor­ma­tion on this mat­ter, a lot has been done about dif­fer­ent relat­ed prob­lems before. There are a lot of com­pa­nies here. Com­pre­hend­ing these infor­ma­tion and under­stand­ing our cur­rent sit­u­a­tion was crit­i­cal to deter­mine our course of action. So this shaped our process a lit­tle bit actu­al­ly. Deter­min­ing which ways we are going to fol­low for legal strug­gle in order to reveal the abuse of rights, build­ing our own peace­ful action meth­ods, con­tact­ing and com­mu­ni­cat­ing with the oth­ers both in Turkey and world­wide to cre­ate a sol­i­dar­i­ty net­work for our move­ment and ulti­mate­ly mak­ing our voic­es heard can be sum­ma­rized as what we have done so far.

• Do you have any sim­i­lar­i­ties with Friend­ship of Alakır Val­ley? Could you tell us a lit­tle bit about your com­mu­ni­ca­tion with them and the work you’ve done together?

The ongo­ing process in Alakır is one of the most impor­tant strug­gles that inspired Friend­ship of Mount Ida by show­ing that it is pos­si­ble to stand togeth­er and resist eco­log­i­cal destruc­tion. Our friend­ship with them dates back before the begin­ning of our jour­ney. Friend­ship of Alakır Val­ley has been fol­low­ing the process with us since we put our­selves for­ward for this strug­gle. Along with our sim­i­lar­i­ties, we have dif­fer­ences aris­ing from the dif­fer­ences in our process­es. For exam­ple, dif­fer­ences between what to do about hydro­elec­tric pow­er plants and gold mines, the con­di­tions of Mount Ida region, the neces­si­ty to com­mu­ni­cate with the orga­ni­za­tions that start­ed the strug­gle in this region before us. On the oth­er hand, as we men­tioned, the expe­ri­ences of Alakır and oth­er move­ments were very impor­tant for us not to start over from scratch and to dis­cov­er more eas­i­ly what we would do. We have ben­e­fit­ed from these and shaped our process accord­ing to our own con­di­tions. We are con­stant­ly in com­mu­ni­ca­tion with them and are in sol­i­dar­i­ty for what needs to be done to make our voic­es heard. You can find Alakır on our pages and us on theirs. Beyond these, we are one in the heart; our rea­sons, anoth­er world that we dreamed of, our beliefs, our defens­es are one.

Kazdağları

• In which years did this domes­tic and for­eign mine plun­der start­ed in Mount Ida and how did we end up expe­ri­enc­ing the eco-break­down of the day?

Eco-break­down plans are not new. The licens­es for Kira­zlı Gold Mine was tak­en in 1987 by Tüprag Min­ing, the sub­con­trac­tor of Eldo­ra­do Gold. In 1989, they sold %50 of their shares to New­mont and then New­mont left the licens­es. Direc­tore Gen­er­al of Min­ing ten­dered for a con­tact in 2002, Tech Resources took over and in 2004, with %40 of the shares, and Fron­teer Devel­op­ment got involved. In 2004–2005, they made some drilling and in 2007, the first tech­ni­cal report was pub­lished. In this peri­od the changes in the min­ing law helped them get­ting involved and invest­ing in the area well. After that the process con­tin­ued with Alam­os Gold’s per­mits and Teck Cominco’s drilling. While this process was going on for Kira­zlı, begin­ning from ear­ly 2000s, there has been a sig­nif­i­cant increase in the num­ber of the projects through­out the Mount Ida region. So the map of this plun­der began to emerge as of the 2000 and the changes of the min­ing law. The strug­gle of the move­ments in the region began in 2007. By the way, these dates are not a coin­ci­dence, we can say that the eco-break­down we face today in many parts of Turkey has the sim­i­lar chronology.

kazdaglari

• This new eco-break­down wave in the world is based on plun­der­ing and mar­ket­ing of the under­ground gold, gas and oil deposits with high­ly pro­tect­ed state sup­port; espe­cial­ly in water and for­est areas. What do you think brings this glob­al rav­en­ous­ness to this reck­less extent?

In addi­tion to talk­ing about what com­pa­nies are doing about it, it is impor­tant that we focus on what we do and how we live. We con­sume. We do not stake a claim on what we have and where we live. We are alien­at­ed to every­thing about our lives; from the food we eat to clothes we wear, from the tech­nol­o­gy we use to deci­sions made about our lives. There is demand, we are still demand­ing. We do this out of habit, uncon­scious­ly. We repeat what we have been taught… We often talk about the social media and the ener­gy we use for the min­ing strug­gle, as we ques­tion many things over and over again. The cost of a wed­ding ring is 20 tons of min­ing waste, is that the proof of the com­mit­ment of two peo­ple? We are the ones who give this oppor­tu­ni­ty to this glob­al rav­en­ous­ness. We need to change. What brings this to this reck­less extent is the con­sump­tion fren­zy; it is the fact that we do not take care of our com­mons, that we for­get that the will for our lives belongs to us. On the oth­er hand, every­thing is very explic­it when we look at the cap­i­tal. We are try­ing to deal with com­pet­i­tive com­pa­nies that we are not able to com­pre­hend the val­ue of the zeros of the share­hold­er val­ues. All the legit­i­mate means of the sys­tem are used to regen­er­ate itself; edu­ca­tion, media, jobs we have to work to meet the needs for liv­ing etc. We are talk­ing about apply­ing for abuse of rights to gov­ern­ments in legal strug­gle but they are actu­al­ly the oth­er actors of this busi­ness. Liv­ing beings in the places where the big com­pa­nies in league with gov­ern­ments exploit are pay­ing the price of their profit.

Next tar­get for Alam­os Gold: Çamyurt

• How did the legal and de fac­to strug­gles of the peo­ple liv­ing in Mount Ida against to the eco-break­down projects belong to Alam­os Gold and its deriv­a­tives, the for­eign hand of the gold plun­der­ers who ran­sacked the region has an impact on this ulti­mate resis­tance today? What atti­tude did Friend­ship of Mount Ida have in the course of this struggle?

The strug­gle in the region has a long-terme his­to­ry as we have men­tioned before. Beside of the ongo­ing project appli­ca­tions and Envi­ron­men­tal Impact Assess­ment (EIA) process­es, there are annul­ment suits won by the orga­ni­za­tions in here, many exam­ple cas­es that were stopped in the begin­ning of the EIA process­es; in pub­lic infor­ma­tion meet­ings or in Com­mit­tee of Inspec­tion and Eval­u­a­tion Meet­ings. Recent­ly, de fac­to strug­gle in Kira­zlı has had a great impact on the stop­ping of Havran Demirte­pe Gold Mine Project again in the region. Although the unlaw­ful­ness at this point is ter­ri­ble, the his­to­ry of the legal strug­gle of the Kira­zlı Gold-Sil­ver Mine Project is one of these exam­ples as well. This project was stopped by the deci­sion of the Coun­cil of State. What hap­pens next is high­ly con­tro­ver­sial, but we think it is impor­tant that the legal strug­gle con­tin­ues. Not every­one has the same opin­ion and does not have to adopt the same meth­ods, so the law, at least to bring out abuse of rights and to resist in this respect, is a very uni­fy­ing ground. Of course, this ground had a major impact on the for­ma­tion of the ulti­mate resis­tance poten­tial of today. Friend­ship of Mount Ida has pur­sued the legal strug­gles that was going on since the day we came togeth­er and where nec­es­sary, endeav­ored to share the flow of infor­ma­tion and tried to spread the word on this side of the strug­gle. Actu­al­ly we also took place in almost all of this de fac­to actions as well. Besides, of course, we have our own action and legal strategies.

Kazdağları

• Where do you think this process will evolve?

We hope that ecol­o­gy move­ment in Turkey will gain anoth­er accel­er­a­tion with this move­ment. We already joined hands with most of the ongo­ing strug­gles in here. We have been fol­low­ing and com­mu­ni­cat­ing with the social/ecological move­ments relat­ed to this issue world­wide since the begin­ning. At one point, we were expect­ing, after a long patient silence this wave also reflects in Turkey. Today there are Sal­da, Fat­sa, Alakır, North­ern Forests, METU, Mount Mun­zur, and Mount Murat, Sinop, Cer­at­te­pe and unfor­tu­nate­ly many oth­er strug­gles in this land. We believe that these strug­gles, each ini­ti­at­ed by their own pow­er in their own local­i­ty, will be stronger togeth­er. Togeth­er we are quite con­fi­dent that our voic­es will be loud­er and we are full of hope for an achieve­ment. How­ev­er, on the oth­er hand, the dimen­sions of the plun­der are ter­ri­ble, new appli­ca­tions and new plans are being made by ignor­ing these strug­gles. Per­haps, the fact that we find such a strong voice is an oppor­tu­ni­ty for the pub­lic to talk about this issue seri­ous­ly and to real­ize that the strug­gle is a defense of life in supra-polit­i­cal level.

• In trans-nation­al lev­el, how does Friend­ship of Mount Ida real­i­ty and resis­tance inter­act with oth­er sim­i­lar areas of resis­tance in the world? For exam­ple, do you have any con­tact with the Greek friends on the oppo­site side of Dar­d­anelles (friends who resist against to the inter­na­tion­al mug­gers like Eldo­ra­do Gold who plun­dered Greek forests and waters, poi­soned with cyanide)?

In fact, most of the com­pa­nies that the strug­gles face are the same. Gen­er­al­ly only the sec­ond con­trac­tor com­pa­nies in local areas are chang­ing. For exam­ple, one of the places Alam­os Gold destroyed with very seri­ous acci­dents was Mulatos mine in Mex­i­co. Eldo­ra­do Gold is in Uşak, Turkey as well as in Greece. We are in con­tact / try­ing to con­tact with the strug­gles in many parts of the world. There is a net­work for anti-min­ing strug­gles called Yes to Life No to Min­ing, we com­mu­ni­cate with this net­work. The heart of the min­ing sec­tor beats in Cana­da, although they are not direct­ly affect­ed by this sec­tor, there are real­ly impor­tant anti-min­ing move­ments and net­works in Cana­da which com­mu­ni­cates with local strug­gles around the world. We are in sol­i­dar­i­ty with them. We had con­tact with our friends in Greece at the begin­ning of the sto­ry but we have not cre­at­ed a com­mon agen­da yet, but we are try­ing to estab­lish a con­nec­tion again in the cur­rent process. We have rela­tions with activists and local move­ments from many coun­try but the process in here is real­ly com­pli­cat­ed right now and the resis­tance just gained accel­er­a­tion, so the answer to the ques­tion of what we can do togeth­er will be deter­mined in pro­gres­sive aspects.

ecologie kazdaglari

Have you ever thought about cre­at­ing a coor­di­na­tion with Ham­bi insur­gents who have been resist­ing for years against RWE Ener­gy Com­pa­ny which loots the Ham­bach for­est for coal?

We close­ly fol­low Ham­bi insur­gents. We tried to con­tact them sev­er­al times but we haven’t been able to com­mu­ni­cate yet. They have a lot of things to do and fol­low as much as we do so it is nor­mal. Of course, we need to reach them for the idea of estab­lish­ing a coor­di­na­tion. Such an idea has not been cre­at­ed yet.

• What are the con­crete demands of Friend­ship of Mount Ida?

First of all, we ask the Gov­er­nor­ship of Çanakkale and the Min­istry of Envi­ron­ment and Urban Plan­ning to deter­mine the num­ber of trees cut in vio­la­tion of EIA report, stop the oper­a­tion which is also in vio­la­tion of EIA imme­di­ate­ly and impose legal­ly nec­es­sary sanc­tions for the Kira­zlı Gold-Sil­ver Mine Project. How­ev­er, there are 40 more metal­lic min­ing projects in the region, which 27 of them are gold mines. This is an irre­versible destruc­tion for Mount Ida region. In their state­ments, the insti­tu­tions argue that the min­ing area is far from Mount Ida. Mount Ida region is a unique for­est and moun­tain ecosys­tem. It is an incred­i­ble region in terms of cul­tur­al her­itage with thou­sands of years of his­to­ry. We want these plun­der­ing projects to be stopped and the entire region declared as a pro­tect­ed area.

• Is there any­thing else you want to add?

Mount Ida regions is not the only region which suf­fers from this eco-break­down. Each and every local strug­gle has to make their voic­es loud­er. The impact of the min­ing indus­try on this cri­sis should be exam­ined in more detail in these days when the glob­al cli­mate cri­sis is on the agen­da. Sol­i­dar­i­ty should increase. In the con­tin­u­a­tion of the resis­tance, they will want to politi­cize and pro­voke this issue both local­ly and glob­al­ly. We defend that this is relat­ed to our lives and is a mat­ter of supra-pol­i­tics. We have no claim for any ide­o­log­i­cal pur­pos­es, our only con­cern is our right to life. It’s the only thing we want every­one to know. We would like to express that we are sin­cere­ly thank­ful to all the defend­ers of life who are in sol­i­dar­i­ty and who stand togeth­er with us by hear­ing our voices.

Kaz­dağları / Mount Ida belongs to us all !
Don’t touch my tree!


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Sadık Çelik
REDACTION | Journaliste 
Pho­tographe activiste, lib­er­taire, habi­tant de la ZAD Nddl et d’ailleurs. Aktivist fotoğrafçı, lib­ert­er, Notre Dame de Lan­des otonom ZAD böl­gesinde yaşıy­or, ve diğer otonom bölge ve mekan­lar­da bulunuyor.