Hamzabeyli Villager spoiled Kiska’s game!

Gift Eroğlu

Hamzabeyli Village of Toroslar district, 12 kilometers away from Mersin and marked as an agricultural area in the development plans, continues its resistance against quarries. This time, Kiska Construction Company, the contractor of Mersin Metropolitan Municipality’s Metro project, haunted the village where Denka Company wanted a quarry in previous years but was denied passage after a struggle.

THEY TOOK AN ACTION BY CLOSING THE ENTRANCE TO THE VILLAGE

The Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) process was initiated within the scope of the permit application made to the ministry by the company that wanted to mine in two separate areas in the village. Before the Public Information Meeting, which was planned to be held in the village in accordance with the EIA legislation, the villagers and Mersin Environmental Platform members protested by blocking the entrance of the village. Toroslar Mayor Abdurrahman Yıldız, Chamber of Agriculture officials and surrounding village headmen also participated and supported the action.

VILLAGER SPOILED THE COMPANY’S GAME

Seeing that the crowd was blocking the entrance to the village, officials from the Ministry of Environment and Urbanization and Kiska Company left the area and waited for the crowd to disperse. Villagers and environmentalists spoiled the company’s game by waiting for hours to protect their living spaces, one of the important centers of agricultural production, as required by the legislation to document that the meeting was not held by keeping minutes.

“HAMZABEYLI VILLAGERS WANT TO LIVE PEACEFULLY IN THEIR VILLAGE”

Speaking on behalf of the villagers who stated that they will continue the struggle, Hamzabeyli Headman Sencer Erdoğan reminded that they had previously resisted the Denka Company and expelled them from the region and said, “For some reason, these quarries are constantly wanted to be opened in our neighbourhood. We expelled the previous one, now a second company has arrived, but we do not want a quarry in our village. If a quarry is opened in the region, there will be no life left here. Agriculture becomes impossible. TOKİ already has a housing project in the region and MESKİ is also carrying out drinking water studies. In addition, we will not allow access to the quarry.
This quarry, which is planned to be built in the middle of Işıktepe, Çavak, Kocahamzalı and Hamzabeyli, is a problem for the whole of Mersin. Our request from the authorities is to listen to our voices; “Hamzabeyli wants to live in peace in his village,” he said.

MAYOR YILMAZ: “WE ARE TOGETHER WITH OUR VILLAGERS”

Mayor of Toroslar, Abdurrahman Yıldız, underlined that Hamzabeyli, which is one of the 32 neighborhoods in the district and has the status of a rural neighborhood, is a residential area that still maintains its village status and said, “Hamzabeyli, our villages are neither far from our eyes nor our hearts. We are with our villagers. That’s why we are taking this action ourselves.

The damage caused by quarries is well known. However, we need to protect the natural balance and living spaces here. Quarries destroy people’s living and production areas. The Taurus Mountains are a region of thousands of square kilometers. With the quarry that is planned to be established, the water rights of this city and the surrounding villages are being usurped. Quarry gangrene started to become an issue in Mersin, in the Taurus Mountains. Not because I am the mayor now, I have been involved in these issues for years, I have been struggling. I have a sensitivity towards ecological struggle, especially regarding quarries. If quarries destroy production, living and agricultural areas, we will oppose it.

THE WORLD IS FASTLY GOING TO A FOOD CRISIS, HUNGER IS AT THE DOOR!

This is a production region full of pomegranate, olive and citrus trees. The world is rapidly heading towards a food crisis, and we are heading towards hunger in our country and our city. Why does this hunger arise? Since we made the villages uninhabitable in the last 30-40 years… As the villages emptied, slums were created in the cities. The type of agriculture in Turkey is that we do not do industrial agriculture like in Europe, which is not necessary anyway. In Turkey, we feed the people in this country mostly through individual family farms.

“WE ARE GOING TOWARDS COMPLETING AGRICULTURE IN ORDER TO MAKE SOMEONE RICH”

We have already moved a significant part of the total population from rural to urban areas. While we have completed a significant part of agriculture for this reason, we are now heading towards completing the remaining agriculture in order to enrich those who will benefit narrow circles such as quarries. Therefore, we end up in hunger. We cannot tolerate this.

We are against such organizations that will take away the most fundamental right of this society, the right to life. And we will not allow this project to be carried out.

“THEY WANT TO MAKE STONE FOR THE PORT, 90 PERCENT OF which belongs to foreigners”

The people here are trying to hold on to life. Why are you disrupting these people’s lives? Go and choose to move the mountain where there is no life yet.

But they will probably take stones from here to fill the port within the scope of Mersin International Port Management Inc.’s (MIP) sea filling project, which is a more serious side of the matter. It is planned that every day, 2 thousand trucks will pass through the heart of Toroslar district to the Mediterranean Sea and reach the port through this narrow road in the village. Could such nonsense be possible?

We do such things without taking any of these into account, just to add profit to the port operator, whose capital belongs to foreigners, 90 percent of which means that he does not have even a penny left. Let’s think about the people a little bit. Let’s think about ourselves. “When we finish life in the countryside, we will face hunger,” he said.

“WITH THIS PROJECT, THE MOUNTAINS ARE WANTED TO BE DESTROYED”

Sabahat Aslan, President of Mersin Environment and Nature Association (MERÇED), one of the stakeholders of the Environmental Platform that supports the villagers, said, “We came here today to contribute to the public resistance against the public information meeting of the Kiska Company, which wants to open a quarry in Hamzabeyli. With this project, the mountains are wanted to be riddled with holes. We will never allow this. “We are here with our neighborhood headmen and the people, we will continue our struggle,” he said.