The last destructive blow of the holding that gets sturdy as it leans on the political power. Preparations for the ‘Halilağa Copper Quarry Capacity Increase, Ore Enrichment Plant and Waste Storage Facility’ to be built in Hacıbekirler village of Çanakkale Bayramiç have begun by cutting down trees on 5200 decares of land. On 9 November, minibuses, buses and vehicles departing from different parts of the Aegean, Thrace and Anatolia park on both sides of the road. When a person cries with choking breath for a tree, it brings to mind the mythic past of this geography, the Homeric texts. As in the tragedies where pain rises from human bodies to the clouds of Zeus, where vows of revenge and anger do not fit in the mountains, women cry out “do not cut down our trees”, doubled over from shouting.
As we drive along the winding country roads, Mount Ida rises around us, not crushing us with its majesty, but with its greatness that promises confidence and compassion. When the deep black of the freshly poured asphalt catches our eyes in some parts of the road, we know that we are approaching somewhere. When you curve upwards like this from the main road, you think that you will come across a path, a country road for one vehicle at most. No, we come across a road paved with cobblestones laid on metropolitan pavements, wide enough for four lanes of traffic, wide enough for huge construction machines to honk their horns at each other. Because at the end of it there is the construction site of Cengiz Holding's Truva Copper Mining, which covers an area larger than a single village. The last destructive blow of the holding that gets sturdy as it leans on the political power. Preparations for the ‘Halilağa Copper Quarry Capacity Increase, Ore Enrichment Plant and Waste Storage Facility’ to be built in Hacıbekirler village of Çanakkale Bayramiç have begun by cutting down trees on 5200 decares of land.
At noon on 9 November, minibuses, buses and vehicles departing from different parts of the Aegean, Thrace and Anatolia are parked on both sides of this cobblestone road. In fact, a few construction machines, which are being operated illegally because the permit procedures have not been completed, have been left in a corner with their driver's seats empty. Abandoned instruments of crime.
We turn towards the trees, we are crowded. As we walk through the oaks and red pines with slogans and banners, clouds of dust rise from our feet. It hasn't been raining for a while; the soil and the streams below long for water. This should have been our problem.
"We suffer great hardship"
On both sides there are wood blocks cut and stacked. You can't see the soil through the large pine branches left to dry and the cones scattered like the beads of a rosary. Some of the standing trees are marked in red, as if a red rope had been wrapped around their necks; some have numbers that will obviously work like a death-row counter. Unless someone jumps in front of the earth-moving machine, as long as they remain silent, their turn will come. Those healthy trees around us give us sadness like looking at patients whose death is imminent. The problem is that it is not nature that is sick, but the order.
When a person cries with choking breath for a tree, it brings to mind the mythic past of this geography, the Homeric texts. As in the tragedies where pain rises from human bodies to the clouds of Zeus, where vows of revenge and anger do not fit in the mountains, women cry out “do not cut down our trees”, doubled over from shouting. They are puzzled, asking how this can happen, what do you want from us? ‘Get out’ and “a plague on both your houses” are flying in the air. There are those who once voted for the AKP, they say so themselves. At some moments they seem to be delirious, like lamenting, like beating themselves up at a condolence.
The water of the region, which is already diminishing due to wrong policies and the climate crisis, will be used by the company; it is thought that 5 million cubic metres of water will be drawn from the Kocabaş Stream annually. Although copper is emphasised in the planned production, it is known that gold mining is also included, which means cyanide pools. The villages of Hacıbekirler, Yanıklar, Muratlar and Halilağa in Bayramiç and Çan districts will be directly affected; the pastures where they graze their animals, the fields and orchards they cultivate will literally disappear, but the destructive impact of the project will spread to ten villages and from there to the whole region. On 12 November, during their protest in front of the Council of State, they said: "We suffer great hardship". What a sentence.
The sounds of saws and sawmills were heard from the houses and they ran. Two weeks ago, Cengiz Holding started to cut down 1 million trees in the area that needed to be ‘cleared’ for the mine site. The ban on entering the forest, which was imposed to prevent forest fires in the summer season, was extended until 30 November by the decision of the Çanakkale Governorate. Until we arrived at the felling area, we saw signs telling us that it was forbidden to enter the forest from time to time. Not those who cut down the trees, not those who plan an ecological disaster in this geography, but those who want to protect the trees are illegal.
The dust of the soil could have been mixed with the gendarmerie's pepper spray, and people could have been dragged on the ground in front of the construction machinery. At some point that day, it seemed as if the decision was taken to retreat in front of the construction site and act as if those people did not exist. Perhaps it was calculated that the attack, taking into account the crowd, would make the news of the protest bigger. Gendarmes with helmets and shields, masked employees of the private security company surrounded the base of capital as if they were not human beings, beyond being a wall of flesh.
In fact, there are two lawsuits filed and viewing made for the cancellation of the EIA Positive Decision. The experts have prepared reports on the lack of public interest in the realisation of this project and the destruction it will cause. But the court does not even listen to the experts it has chosen. Moreover, the entire project, which will take 20 years, is ten times the area covered by the EIA report. They are trying to buy the lands belonging to individuals outside the forest land one by one, and to issue an ‘expropriation’ decision by using the law as a pawn for those who refuse to sell. As if in jest, for a project that has no public benefit, extortion on behalf of capital under the guise of expropriation. The state working for capital with all its institutions. Outright plunder, blatant colonialism.
On 9 November, a pickup truck was parked between those felled trees. People from Çan, for example, or Balıkesir, Denizli, Munzur, Kocaeli or Akbelen took turns to get on that lorry and take the microphone. People who had been tested by quarries, dynamite, thermal power plants and mining projects before, some had won, some had lost. For example, someone who has a cyanide pool a few hundred metres away from his house speaks. People who are at times angry but helpless in this war waged by the gods of rent, and at times seem great precisely by standing up to them.
When the crowd disperses, the construction machines reappear, as they always do, and the watchmen block their way. Are they so comfortable because they are sure that the law will work in their favour?As this article was being written, a group from the villages that will be most affected were protesting in Ankara, trying to make their voices heard at the Council of State for the cancellation of the EIA positive decision. “Are they so comfortable because they are sure that the law will work in their favour?’ should therefore remain in question form; the possibility that they could be stopped, as happened in Kirazlı and in many other environmental struggles, should not be forgotten. This has happened.
The news is coming in: While the villagers are in front of the Council of State in Ankara and visiting the Parliament, the cutting continues at twice the speed.Wider roads are being opened into the forest. Since cutting 1 million trees one by one with a sawmill would take time, bigger tools are needed. For them, time and nature are both cash. They are cutting while you are reading this article.
