Remembering an Eco Warrior

As we go into February it looks like good news might be on the horizon for the endangered coastline of Turkey.  Rather than presumptuously celebrate the possibility that someone in government has actually realised that they can't endlessly sell off what's left of this country's natural beauty, I am remembering a local heroine who put her heart, soul and health into fighting to keep our corner of Turkey clean and natural. When Saynur Gelendost moved to Bodrum in the late 1970s, she probably thought she'd live on a boat in the harbour and carry on her artistic pursuits, but she was not the sort to sit on the sidelines and watch her beloved Gulf of Gokova ruined.  She is famous for her protests against power stations and drew our attention by asking if the generation of electricity should be more important than the welfare of the environment and the public's health.  She asked why 3 power stations should be built in our corner of Muğla on active seismic areas, by a foreign consortium that not only took insufficient notice of the inferiority of the coal available here but also failed to provide adequate filters and, having made this mistake once, carried on making the same mistake again and again. When passive protests proved ineffective she was the first to lie down in front of bulldozers and she embarked on a hunger strike in the 1990s which probably hastened her demise in 2003. Her legacy is that proper filters were eventually fitted.

The power station chimney at Ören. Positioned next to the sea to provide cooling water , a process which is detrimental to marine life. 

If you are sailing in the Gulf of Gokova, you will notice bin bags being collected from deserted bays by a rubbish boat - an idea instigated and brought to fruition by Saynur Hanim after she was shocked at the amount of trash left behind by charter boats. When our village was fighting a cement company that was set on turning our hillsides into an open cast mine, Saynur was there with support and practical advice that helped us rout the developers.

I was reminded of her a second time the past couple of days as tempers flared again between Turkey and Greece over Kardak Island, a tiny cluster of rock between Gümüşlük and Kalymnos.  "Seals belong on Kardak" she stated, "not guns."

Digging Deep.

The bulldozers have now left our bit of forest and we've had a few days of peace, but we are very aware that our quiet existence could end any time despite the promises of the forestry department.  Hopefully, any company might think twice before they try to redevelop this bit of nature: our village has a badass reputation to live up to. In late 1995, sitting on the terrace as the sun went down, we noticed that all the trees around our garden had red crosses on them. Hubby went off to the village to see what was going on and came back with gut-wrenching news.  A cement company had leased the forest behind the village and was going to cut down all the trees and strip-mine the whole area for dolomite. The access road to the mine was going to go around our house.  There had been no warning of this, no planning meetings, no surveys and not one member of the village had been consulted. The owner of the cement company had a relative in parliament and the mine was a done deal.  The first company men started to arrive in their jeeps, swaggering around as if they owned the place and got their first surprise - a volley of rocks. Jumping back into their vehicles, they sped off.  The owners turned up to negotiate. They would pave a village road - the villagers were not interested. A new school was offered - who would want to bring up their children in a mine?  The Turkish Green Party leader, Bilge Contepe,  and the most effective local environmental activist, Saynur Gelendost got involved and found us a wonderful  young lawyer Nurcan Akça who suggested we commission an environmental survey to see if we had any endangered flora or fauna. On a local level, we were busy painting banners and involving radio, TV and newspapers and collecting stashes of large rocks at each end of the village to dissuade any one heading for the forest. (I offer a belated apology on behalf of the village to the Bodrum motor cross club who, choosing the wrong day to ride through, must have wondered what they'd done to deserve a pelting of rocks by a group of very angry headscarved ladies) Semkay

A group of women wound themselves in the cloth used to wrap corpses and tied themselves to trees. The protest continued all winter until the inevitable confrontation happened in April 1996. The company enlisted the jandarme to protect them as they tried to bring their equipment into the village. The main road was blocked with petrol-soaked tree trunks and the whole village turned out to face the military police. We put the children in the mosque for safety and the women stood at the front facing the armed jandarmes. Shots were fired and arrests made, and finally the soldiers forced their way through. Six villagers spent 56 days in gaol but the rock throwing  and disruption continued. 

Eventually the environmental report found rare plants in the forest above the village which gave the lawyer a reason to open a court case to stop the mine.  Finally realising just how much they had underestimated the resolve of the villagers and tiring of the sabotage and constant difficulties in getting to the mine, the company found another village who fell for their bribes and left us in peace, although it was 4 more years before the mining licence was revoked in court.
Sorry for the poor quality of the pictures but they are firmly stuck in my album so I had to photograph them rather than scan.