Konya Ilgın Elektrik Update

Neoliberal landscapes – mapping an open-pit coal mine and coal-fired power plant in the Kurugöl (Ilgın, Konya)

The pace of environmentally degrading development in Turkey continues unabated. Today NPR carried the story of how an airport, bridge, and canal planned or under construction in Istanbul threaten the forests and water of the city. But what of all the other thousands of projects such as hydroelectric dams and power plants that are altering the landscape of Turkey? I have been intending to make a map of one such project that is going forward in an area that I work in, the Ilgın open-pit coal mine and power plant. A workshop I attended on participatory mapping at the University of Texas’s Institute of Latin American Studies on Friday (31 January 2014) motivated me to finally sit down and design the map. Although some may question the comparability of the situation of the indigenous of South and Central America discussed in the workshop to Turkey, the struggle against neoliberal appropriations of resources and landscapes, and threats to livelihood and well-being are pervasive, and the inhabitants of the villages of the Kurugöl (located on the west of the Anatolian Plateau in central Turkey) are particularly marginalized.

My map is not an example of participatory mapping but I have made it for the people I talked to in the Kurugöl:

For the mayor of Çavuşçugöl – Aware of the inevitability of the complete destruction of the livelihood of the farmers of Çavuşçugöl if the Kurugöl mine is opened, the mayor is campaigning to save the fields. Smaller coal mines currently operate in the hills to the west of Çavuşçugöl, but the new mine would consume much of the agricultural and pastoral lands of Çavuşçugöl as well as threaten the springs of Kartal Pınar and Uzun Pınar. Perhaps also the mayor’s fond memories of his childhood at the threatened Çallı Ağıl (near Çallı Ağıl Höyük) influences his opposition to the new mine. He has consulted with geologists on the feasibility of a geothermal power plant located at the hot springs to the south of Çavuşçugöl. Why not renewable geothermal electricity?

For the inhabitants of Hareme/Gölyaka – Having lived downwind and suffered the dust of a now closed open-pit coal mine since the 1970s, the inhabitants of Hareme hardly benefited economically from the closed coal mine. (The inhabitants emphasize that their village was only provided with running water a couple of years ago because of their proactive teacher.) Now the village has to choose between selling out and emigrating elsewhere, or resisting the acquisition of their fields.

For the gardeners of Misafirli – On visit to the village of Misafirli, the people we spoke with worried about how the coal mine would adversely affect their health. Well-informed about the necessity of living in an unpolluted environment and eating a healthy diet, they showed us the stinging nettles and other nutritious greens in their garden and spoke of their village’s position on a camel caravan route through the first half of the twentieth century.

For the inhabitants of Yorazlar – Still without title to either the land their houses occupy or the fields they farm, the inhabitants of Yorazlar were disenfranchised under the more social democratic governments of the middle of the twentieth century and their disenfranchisement only continues under the neoliberal government of the present. In 2012 the government granted a permit to a company to extract resources from the village commons with consulting the inhabitants of Yorazlar.

For Tekeler? – We have not yet managed to schedule the time to visit the village. (Local histories mention several potential archaeological sites.)

All the inhabitants of the Kurugöl understand the threat to their livelihood and well-being, and their natural and cultural landscapes. The extent that they would embrace the archaeological landscape as part of their landscape depends, of course, on their inclinations. Regardless, ethically we must publicize the research of the Yalburt Yaylası Archaeological Landscape Research Project in order to facilitate the work of those who wish to campaign against the coal mine. Previously, the Kurugöl was thought to be a marshy seasonal lake surrounded by barren slopes, and both archaeologically uninteresting and agriculturally unproductive. The project’s research has shown that the lake submerged several archaeological settlements, provisionally in the medieval period. Before the formation of the lake, the Kurugöl was a fertile agricultural plain ringed by settlements, defended by the fortifications of Uzun Pınar on the western hills, and protected by the sacred spring of Yalburt Yaylası and sinkhole of Şangır Mağaza in the northeastern uplands. Now we know the Kurugöl to be a densely settled archaeological landscape. Furthermore, all the inhabitants will tell you that their fields are agriculturally productive but the water drained from the Kurugöl and collected in the Çavuşçu Lake/Reservoir irrigates the plains of Atlantı and Ilgın and not their own fields in the Kurugöl.

Lozano Long Workshop 2014 – Critical Reflections on Participatory Mapping and Indigenous Territoriality:

http://www.utexas.edu/cola/insts/llilas/events/29689

Participatory Mapping – the struggle for land and resources:

https://blogs.utexas.edu/participatory-mapping/

Nova Cartografia Social da Amazônia (an amazing project):

http://novacartografiasocial.com/

Yalburt Yaylası Archaeological Landscape Research Project:

http://proteus.brown.edu/yalburt/Home

Konya-Ilgın Elektrik Üretim ve Ticaret A.Ş.

http://www.cinergroup.com.tr/companies/konya-ilgin-elektrik

I uploaded a .kmz file derived from the map of the Kurugöl coal mine made available to us in the summer of 2013 to the Yalburt Yaylası Archaeological Landscape Research Project wiki under Maps.

http://proteus.brown.edu/yalburt/54

To give a sense of the scale of the Kurugöl coal mine to my students at UT Austin last semester, I plotted the planned boundaries of the pit, the overburden deposits, the power plant, and the license over downtown Austin, the university campus, and neighborhoods to the north.