We resisted!

Photos and videos: Eren Dağıstanlı

Click to read the article in Turkish

First things first, let me tell you a secret.

You know what they say about a woman from the Black Sea; "hardworking". Don't believe that, she has been forced to be that way. If the Black Sea woman has a feature, from what I have observed, it is her patience. She waits patiently, she does, but if you touch a sore spot, you will never know which way to run.

The woman you see in the image of the article is one of those Black Sea women. Her sore spot is the village she has been living in, the shadow of the tree she has grown up under, the stream she has been taking her cows to drink from. In other words, it is Cengiz İnşaat's wish to turn these places into a construction site.

Cengiz İnşaat, known to be close to the Justice and Development Party (AKP), wants to build a quarry in Rize's İkizdere. Naturally, the people of the region are against the pillaging of their living spaces.

CLICK - Villagers resist pro-government company's stone quarry project in Black Sea valley

The "Get out of my living space, Cengiz" protests, led by women in particular, have been supported by the public for about a week.

The photographs and videos of Eren Dağıstanlı, one of the life advocates living in the region, are important evidence of what has happened.

In short, while the people are fighting for the rights of the wolf, the bird and the nature, the law enforcement forces are acting for the rights of Cengiz İnşaat. Aside from protecting the living space of the people, it stands by those who want to plunder those areas.

Unfortunately, İkizdere is not the first in terms of Cengiz İnşaat's nature massacre projects. This company has transformed a part of the village of Haçapit in Rize's Pazar district, where Hemshin people live, into a barren land because of its love for stone extraction.

For the airport to be constructed in Pazar, the company has turned Haçapit right next to them into a stone quarry site, a construction site, instead of removing stones from an already barren land just so that they do not have to make short distance travel expenses.

At that time, there was the resistance of the people of Haçapit but could Cengiz İnşaat's, which has an eye for money, tricks end?

The collaborators of Cengiz in the region deceived the people by dividing them into two, sometimes by depositing large amounts of money in the account of some of them, and some by saying "I'll recruit their relatives".

For those who are curious about the details, I leave one of the news I covered for Yeşil Newspaper at that time, here.

Haçapit before the quarry. Photographed by Evrim Kepenek.

As a result, a part of the green paradise Haçapit, where thousands of flowers bloom at the point reached, has turned into hell today.

Haçapit after the quarry. Photograph taken from social media.

If you ever get a chance to go to the Black Sea, I would definitely recommend you to stop by Haçapit and see those brown barren lands. In fact, let me suggest that you don't go to Ayder or Uzungöl for tourism purposes anymore. It is very difficult to get to those areas and return from traffic anyway.

Do not stop by the highlands that have been popular in recent years. If you go to the Eastern Black Sea Region, I suggest you visit the looted areas in the region starting from Samsun and extending to Artvin. Talk to people. Almost every village has a struggle against a hydroelectric power plant, resistance against a quarry.

To the women who have resisted: "Who did you vote for?"

Photo: Yeşil Gazete.

This is exactly what is intended to be done in İkizdere today. Cengiz will take its stones and pour them wherever it wants, and in return, it will earn the money it wants. In İkizdere, people will be left with poverty, while their living space is destroyed.

Maybe Cengiz İnşaat has a place to go, but the people of the region have nowhere to go.

For exactly this reason, as in other parts of the country, when you touch its soil, water, tree, the people you call "conservative", "pro-government", "voted for AKP", "for whom did you vote?" turn into resilient rebels. Especially women...

If you look at the comments written under the photos and videos of the women of İkizdere in resistance, these are the only reason why the opposition of the country cannot come to power. Constant marginalization saying "they got what they deserved". These women met with police violence at that age!

When I do a quick Google search of İkizdere, one of the search titles that I come across is "İkizdere election results". Yes, the voting rate of the ruling party in that region is around 88 percent...

I wonder if you are aware that these women are rebelling against the party they voted for. They do not say, "If it was done during our party's period, they must mean well". If this is not an important political awareness, a political action, what is it?

Believe me, things like this are very difficult when living locally. You have to act by breaking those outside "eyes" and "words". While these women risked everything and were fighting against Turkey's biggest plunderer company with their walking sticks, please don't let somebody tell them "What were you thinking until now?"

"Are we objects?"

If we could all take such beautiful and effective actions, if we had such correct political choices, I guess we would not be in this situation in our country.

See, what does one of the women who were detained in İkizdere say?

"They took us by our arms. 'Take these away, take these away' they said, they carried us like objects. And we resisted!"

#İkizdere’de gözaltına alınan kadınlar anlatıyor: Direnduk! Sen bizi mal gibi mi götüriyisun, emir veriyisun! Direnduk! pic.twitter.com/dTxmxL4EdU

— Eren Dağıstanlı (@erendagistanli) May 1, 2021

The meaning of that "we resisted" is well known to the villagers who are likely to witness a stone quarry construction on the top of their village, the people of Ordu who oppose the construction of a hydroelectric power plant in their stream, and the women of Bartın who resist coal-fired power plants.

Those who sit in the center of Ankara and sell our local living spaces to companies on the map, those who make these plans... Those who leave the fish in the stream without water and the bird on whose branch it nests without a tree should know very well. Not only for human beings but also for the right to life of all nature: "We resisted, and we will resist!" (EMK/DCE/VK)