Service boycott of telecom and coastal regions

The Gulf region of Balıkesir is well-known; it begins in Altınova, which neighbors the Dikili district of İzmir to the south, and extends along a 100-kilometer coastline all the way to Küçükkuyu in Çanakkale. It encompasses the entire Edremit Gulf, which includes many tourism centers such as Ayvalık, Cunda Island, Akçay, Edremit, Altınoluk, Güre, Gömeç, and Burhaniye.

This is a tourism region with its beaches and Mount Ida (Kaz Dağı). Its population increases four, five, or perhaps even ten times over during the summer months. If you were to travel along the highway that runs through the region, it would give you an idea of the human and traffic density. Shopping malls, large stores, hotels, summer houses, spas, thermal springs, beaches, and restaurants are packed to the brim, and all of them benefit from the Gulf's sea.

And unfortunately, it seems this entire Gulf lacks a sewage treatment system. The ruling party, which governed the Balıkesir Metropolitan Municipality for 20 years, did not deem it appropriate to install a treatment plant in the Gulf region; in other words, the wastewater of millions of people here is being dumped directly into the sea. Just think, those who build airports in places with no passengers did not see the need to build a treatment plant for the sea where millions of people swim.

Perhaps that is why sea pollution in the Ayvalık sea and some other places in that region has reached extreme levels; the areas in front of hotels in Ayvalık that once had crystal-clear water have now become almost like the Golden Horn.

Ekrem Oran, the former Mayor of Çeşme who was appointed as the coordinator responsible for the Gulf district municipalities by the newly elected Metropolitan Mayor of Balıkesir, Ahmet Akın, stated that one of his first tasks would be to establish a treatment plant for the Gulf Region and gave his word on this. Let us hope they fulfill their promises; otherwise, further pollution of the entire Edremit Gulf is inevitable.

When one sees this pollution in the Gulf region and witnesses the attempts of some greedy tradespeople to fleece every tourist who comes by using the skyrocketing inflation as an excuse, it is hard not to sympathize with people who wait in queues for hours to escape to the island of Lesbos.

So, why did the ruling party mayors who managed the Balıkesir Metropolitan Municipality never think of building a treatment plant in the Gulf Region? The answer that comes to mind, and which is also voiced by officials, is that they were subjected to a service boycott by the government because they received fewer votes from this region; they even stated it openly from the highest level: "No votes, no service."

Just like in İzmir, just like in Diyarbakır, the local people believe that they try not to bring services to these regions at all if possible, or at least to delay them as much as they can.

The Dikili district of İzmir is in the same situation; natural gas has still not been fully brought to the large town of Dikili, which has a winter population of 50 thousand. Before the last local elections, Ankara decided to hastily lay a natural gas pipeline from Bergama to Dikili, presumably as an election investment, but there is no natural gas in most parts of the city, not even in the state hospital.

The public believes that this, too, is being delayed because the ruling party does not receive votes from Dikili, because in the end, let alone a population of 50 thousand, natural gas has been brought to almost every place with a population of 3-5 thousand.

I would like to share one last note from the region with you. As you know, last week was the final days of summer, and combined with the August 30 Victory Day holiday, hundreds of thousands spent the last days of their vacation in these areas again. Dikili was also packed to the brim, but there has been no internet in the region for 8-10 days.

When Telekom does not provide internet, other platforms like Tivibu and Netflix do not work either, of course.

They suggest a few ways to inform Telekom about the internet failure and to register a fault report.

For example, one of them is to send a text message to Telekom's number 6616. Citizens sent them, but nothing happened, and no one responded.

There are also phone lines; if you call them, they ask a thousand questions. Anyway, in the end, a neighbor listened to perhaps 50 questions with great patience for 6 minutes, pressed the buttons, and finally reached a call center representative. The answer received was, "There is a general failure; it will be fixed on Monday, September 2, at 04:00 AM."

Did it get fixed? Of course not; September 2 has passed, and there is still no internet.

Everyone is a witness that this trouble has continued at intervals throughout the entire summer; the same problem had occurred before.

It seems that Telekom, too, looks at the situation by saying, "Forget about the holiday regions," just like those who did not build a treatment plant in the Gulf Region, and skips over the internet.

Let us hope that is not the case.