Inspirations from School Strikes to Water and Conscience Watch, from Mexico to Diyarbakır

Click to read the article in Turkish

Granted as part of 11th International Hrant Dink Award, Inspirations (Işıklar) Awards have been given to a series of people and organizations ranging from 16-year-old Greta Thunberg from Sweden who initiated the school strikes for climate to the Diyarbakır-based Colorful Hopes Association, which is working in the field of children's rights.

Inspiration Awards are granted to persons and organizations that inspire humans and humanity by taking risks and paving the way for them both in Turkey and around the world.

Winners of Inspirations Awards from Turkey are as follows:

İstanbul Airport workers

The workers of the third İstanbul Airport, which is now officially called İstanbul Airport, protested their bad working conditions and occupational homicides in September 2018. The police and gendarmerie officers intervened against the protesters by entering their dormitories and using pepper gas on September 14, 2018. While 537 workers were detained during the intervention, 31 workers were arrested by the court. The Gaziosmanpaşa Chief Public Prosecutor's Office filed an indictment against 61 workers. 30 of 31 workers have been released on probation.

CLICK - Judicial Control Measures Imposed on Released Workers Lifted in Second Hearing

Women objecting to thermal power plants

The project of a coal-based thermal power plant, which was planned to be constructed on an oak forest in the village of Pınarça in Çerkezköy, Tekirdağ, has been cancelled after a negative Environmental Impact Assessment report has been issued for the project.

In February, 2017, a decree of urgent expropriation was published on the Official Gazette, foreseeing the construction of a coal-based thermal power plant on a 1,346 acre area including agricultural lands. Since then, the people of Tekirdağ and Greenpeace had struggled against the project.

CLICK - Villagers Win the Struggle, Thermal Power Plant Project in Çerkezköy Cancelled

Village Schools Exchange Network

The Village Schools Exchange Network (KODA) does not only work to increase the quality of education in village schools across Turkey, but it also develops a network of solidarity among the teachers. The main idea behind the establishment of the KODA is the belief that village schools can, in fact, provide great opportunities for education.

Colorful Hopes Association

Organizing workshops with the aim of alleviating the negative impacts of migration, losses and poverty on children displaced from the devastated neighborhoods of Turkey's southeastern province of Diyarbakır, the Colorful Hopes Association mainly targets the children in 7-14 age group, supporting their social development and ensuring that they are raised as individuals not bullying their peers and respecting gender and differences.

Water and Conscience Watch for Ida Mountains

"How much were you paid for our breath?"

After large swaths of forest land were destroyed in Ida Mountains in Çanakkale due to the mining activities of the Canada-based Alamos Gold company, the local people of the region and environmental activists have been keeping a "Water and Conscience Watch" since July 26.

CLICK - Water and Conscience Watch on its 15th Day: 'There is Freedom Wherever You Are'

The Inspirations from around the world are as follows:

• "Woman in White" Alaa Salah and women who joined the protests to end the dictatorship of Omar al-Bashir in Sudan.
• "Extinction Rebellion", a UK-based international movement that uses non-violent civil disobedience in an attempt to halt mass extinction and minimise the risk of social collapse.
• Espace Masolo Center, which introduces art to children and young people who have lost their families in war or were subjected to abuse in Democratic Republic of Congo.
• Pastors and volunteers who held an around-the-clock church service for over 800 hours to prevent the Armenian Tamrazyan family from being extradited from the Netherlands.
• Citizens who expressed their demands for political change in a peaceful, inclusionary and humorous way with their "Revolution of Smiles" in Algeria.
• Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello, who placed a pink seesaw on the US-Mexico border and resisted against the border with games.
• Women who stood in a human chain of 620 kilometers to protest the temple who did not accept them, calling them "dirty" as they were having their periods.

• Carola Rakete, the captain of the rescue ship Sea-Watch 3, who worked to rescue the refugees attempting to cross the Mediterranean with boats for Europe.
• Greta Thunberg, who initiated the school strikes for climate in Sweden, and all children who have followed suit by joining the strike.
• Mohammad Alaa Aljaleel, who takes care of street cats in war-ridden Aleppo in Syria.
• The women of Scotland who went on a two-day slowdown strike with the slogan "Equal pay is not a gift to be given, it is a right for our members to demand" and whose demands have been met.

(AÖ/SD)