Premeditated murder!

On Thursday, I pointed out that industrial tourism is killing the world, and after listing examples from Southeast Asia, I set an appointment for today to write about the situation and conditions in Turkey.

Let's write it without beating around the bush.

In Turkey, a "premeditated murder" is being committed under the guise of tourism and "summer home ownership."

Moreover, it is happening right before our eyes!

Everything that makes this country a "homeland" for us—with its stones, soil, sea, coast, forests, mountains, hills, and streams—is being sacrificed for the tourism industry, rent-seeking, and the greedy summer-home economy.

In my childhood and youth, I witnessed how the Gulf of Gemlik was killed.

The Gulf of Gemlik, where the water was like an aquarium, where a thousand kinds of fish lived, where shrimp and mussels were so abundant they were practically free, and where we used to catch seahorses on the shores in the mornings, had more than its fair share of the neoliberal change Turkey underwent during the Özal era.

In less than a quarter of a century, it was polluted beyond repair; it reached the point of extinction, so to speak.

Yet, these places were once areas where workers in Bursa, one of Turkey's major industrial cities, would set up tent camps with their families; where rows of family tea gardens lined the shore, allowing people to sip their beers with pleasure; where lamb chops or cumin-heavy meatballs cooked on small grills were not considered a luxury; and where towels were spread out on pristine sand, free from the terror of sunbeds and umbrellas.

This era ended after September 12 with the predatory policies of governments that loved the wealthy. Olive and pine trees were cut down, and "villas" where cultists and sect members clustered were built in their place. Tent camps were replaced by mansions where the nouveau riche would stay for at most three days a year.

The life energy of the Gulf of Gemlik was extinguished.

I would advise students writing doctoral theses on Turkey's social change to examine this period in Bursa as an example of how cultists, sect members, and Islamists filled the space as the working class was forced to withdraw from the public sphere.

After a while, due to intense construction and the lack of infrastructure, the Gulf became unswimmable because of the sewage discharged into the sea. Over the years, almost no fish remained, and the paradise-like geography became so barren that even those who caused it locked their villa doors and migrated like a swarm of locusts to other shores to plunder.

What remained were piles of buildings reminiscent of post-nuclear war films.

Today, the Gulf of Gemlik is under the occupation of refugees and illegal migrants.

Going to the shores to spend time during holidays has become an act of courage.

Now, I am watching the massacre of the Gulf of Edremit in the same way.

During the last holiday, the population exceeded 3 million. Because there was no infrastructure to handle so many people, massive piles of garbage appeared after the holiday. What remained from the vacationers were beaches, picnic areas, stream banks, and forest roads filled with filth.

Plastic bottles, nylon bags, food scraps, broken glass everywhere...

In Ayvalık alone, 3 thousand 660 tons of garbage were collected.

Shelves in markets were emptied; try finding bottled water!

However, it would not be correct to attribute the issue solely to the activity during holiday periods.

Let's put on our reading glasses.

Start from the Geyikli pier across from Bozcaada, enter the Gulf of Edremit after Baba Burnu. Then, through Ayvalık to Altınova, and from there to Salihleraltı, Dikili, Çandarlı, Foça, and finally the Gulf of İzmir...

I claim that this coastline, which is more beautiful than any other in the entire Mediterranean and Aegean geography, has been brutally plundered, so to speak, for the last quarter-century.

It is impossible to find a place that hasn't been concreted over.

With this housing development, that tour company, such-and-such park homes, so-and-so holiday village, this resort, that club, the entire coast has been occupied by greedy upstarts, those burning with the ambition of rent-seeking, money launderers, drug dealers, and the mafia.

It is not very noticeable when passing through the Çanakkale-İzmir road, but if you decide to go towards the coastline of Altınova, you will witness with a heavy heart how this fertile geography, where even a stick would turn into a tree if planted, has been turned into concrete.

If you can pass through the ugly cooperative houses built by those with strong connections in Ankara or the wealthy types like the Grand Bazaar tradesmen in Istanbul and manage to dip your feet in the sea, lucky you!

It sounds like a joke when you hear it, but Mehmet Ertaş, who was elected Mayor from the CHP in the last local elections, is one of the leading contractors in Edremit.

His surname is written on almost every fifth apartment building in Akçay and Altınkum.

For example, to whom are we going to complain now, saying, "The Gulf of Edremit is turning into a pile of concrete, there is no green space left, we cannot breathe, olive trees are being cut down and apartment buildings are being erected in their place"?

He is not going to stop construction activities just because we want him to. After all, if not the local people, expatriates are cashing in their Euros and paying the money to buy the apartments he builds.

Thank God, he's making a living!

However, shouldn't we expect the CHP and CHP local administrators to pursue a policy that protects the country's stones, soil, trees, forests, air, water, sea, and coast?

Or does social municipalism not include a more livable environmental policy with parks, gardens, green spaces, unconcreted beaches, and unpolluted seas?

Has the CHP, like the AKP, set sail for other worlds within the unbearable lightness of the rent economy without us knowing!

Come on, if Edremit is like this in the North Aegean, are Burhaniye and Ayvalık much different...

Of course not.

Balıkesir's Akçay, Gömeç, and Altınova have been plundered and concreted; has İzmir's Dikili and Foça remained "virgin"?

For example, the state of beautiful Salihleraltı is pathetic.

Çandarlı is the same...

I am not even writing about the south of İzmir or the Mediterranean coasts. Those places are like a separate dystopia within the dystopia we are living in almost every respect.

Recently, they said Ahmet Akın, the newly elected CHP Mayor of Balıkesir Metropolitan Municipality, was "meeting with the public in Edremit," so I got up and went.

I missed my reporting days, so I sat in the front row with the title of "member of the press."

While I was wondering how a public meeting is held in a hall with a total of 54 people, a young man with a vibe somewhere between Özgür Özel and Ali Mahir Başarır hopped and skipped into the room.

It was Ahmet Akın.

He started with a flashy introduction: "Citizens are having trouble reaching me, that is true. Because we are always on the streets, among the people. We do not sit in the office chair." He won the hearts of the local press with three or five memorized sentences and gave them some material to promote himself in the newspapers that would come out the next day and on the social media accounts of local reporters.

Just as they were thanking him and ushering the press out of the hall, I couldn't help myself and raised my hand. "Mr. Mayor," I said, "I have a couple of questions. First of all, what will happen with this sewage treatment issue? What is your solution? Can you give us a timeline?"

Since sewage treatment is the responsibility of the Balıkesir Metropolitan Municipality, the addressee of my question was directly Ahmet Akın himself.

Don't ask why I brought it up out of the blue. The sewage treatment problem in the Gulf is the most critical issue today.

All the waste, filth, and sewage of Havran, Edremit, and the concrete forest on the coastline are discharged into the sea almost without any cleaning. The Gulf of Edremit is polluting at an incredible speed and becoming uninhabitable.

It is not that there is no treatment plant, of course.

There is, but its capacity is very low.

Because it is insufficient, almost all waste is discharged into the sea.

In the summer months, people wake up in the middle of the night to a pungent smell of sewage. When they go to the beach the next morning, they see that the sea is full of filth.

The summer-home crowd or local tourists who come for the day think they are swimming and vacationing in waters where the bottom cannot be seen due to sewage.

For example, last year, the emergency room of Edremit State Hospital was constantly filling and emptying due to people catching infections from the sea.

The AKP, which previously held the Balıkesir Metropolitan Municipality, had deliberately and intentionally not touched the sewage treatment issue to put the CHP-run Edremit Municipality in a difficult position.

The former Mayor Yücel Yılmaz had calculated that the local people would blame the CHP municipality of Edremit for the Gulf being full of filth and the place smelling of sewage, but this calculation did not work out in practice.

In the last election, the CHP won the Balıkesir Metropolitan Municipality as well as Edremit.

They won, but nothing changed. At least for now.

Not only has the sewage treatment issue not been resolved, but there is also no timeline for a solution.

I insistently asked Ahmet Akın about this.

- When and how will this sewage treatment issue be resolved? Can you give us a timeline?

They are working on it, they are in the final stages of the financing issue, they will take steps as soon as possible, blah blah blah...

In other words, from what I understand from his explanation, they have neither a proper project to save the Gulf of Edremit and prevent it from being polluted beyond repair, nor do they foresee a timeline for it.

Still, I pressed on. Ahmet Akın preferred to close the issue with a few sentences to the effect of, "Yes, it would have been good if we had come with a set timeline."

However, his first job as soon as he took office should have been to tackle the sewage treatment issue and find a permanent solution to this problem within a few months.

He cannot be unaware that if the Gulf becomes uninhabitable, the Balıkesir economy will be the most affected by this.

It is as clear as day that Balıkesir cannot develop without the economic activities on the shores of both the Sea of Marmara and the Aegean Sea.

In short, the way to develop Balıkesir is to look after the Gulf of Edremit like the apple of one's eye.

How aware he is of this is hard to say.

He hasn't performed very well in the 3 months since the election. While there were so many urgent things to do, he went and changed the logo of Balıkesir. Moreover, he advertised this on social media as if it were a great achievement, but if he had bothered to read the comments under his post, he could have seen the reactions of his fellow citizens.

Unfortunately, he started the 5-year race behind.

They asked the camel why your neck is crooked, and it said, what part of me is straight; let us end our article by saying that the person at the head of the CHP, which the people of my country made the first party in the local elections with great hopes, is not doing much right politically, so how can he be an example to his party's municipalities.