HOW TO BECOME A COLONY: A HANDBOOK!

CYANIDE DIARIES FROM BERGAMA-20

To become a colony, you do not necessarily need to be invaded by the armies of an empire.

Sometimes this process works much more quietly.

This method appears much more “modern” and much more profitable.

This time, in their hands, they do not have holy books blessing their power; they have contracts, investment plans, credit packages, and advertising catalogs.

It is not gods that speak anymore, but gold.

And if the transactions regarding a country's land, mountains, and rivers have begun to be managed by decisions favoring companies rather than the people...

If the people are resisting to protect their living spaces, and the “Decision Makers” are taking sides with capital instead of that people...

If nature is being poisoned under the name of “investment,” public officials are being silenced, science is being rendered voiceless, and the media can be bought...

That is where a country is becoming a colony by its own consent.

There are many examples of these processes in history.

But in this article, we will continue to tell one of them — the story of Turkey's opening to cyanide gold mining.

Starting from Bergama, we will see step by step how a poisonous grip was entered, who ignored what, who resisted, and how this process is read to us like a “handbook on how to become a colony.”

Because gold still shines.

But its light now burns the soil.

(The poison factory and waste ponds in Bergama-Ovacık, where gold-bearing ore brought from outside is now processed)

***

Of course, a lot of water has flowed under the bridge since the times of Midas in ancient ages and the “Gold Rush” adventures in America.

The era of finding “gold” particles among the pebbles in stream beds has long since ended.

The “cyanide octopus,” one of the most dangerous branches of today's savage capitalism, uses the world's deadliest poisons like cyanide and sulfuric acid to try to extract even the small amount of 1 gram of gold found in the soil, counting it as a mine and separating it from the ore.

Even children on the street now know that Turkish lands have also entered the operational area of toxic gold miners.

Of course, the Cyanide Gold Mine, which began operations in Bergama in 2001, is the first of such toxic mining in Turkey.

Bergama is the place where the world's major financial and mining companies, which greedily dove into the 560 gold ore regions said to exist in Anatolia, and their local derivatives, first encountered resistance.

Despite the multinational companies attacking their lands being very powerful, the villagers and townspeople of Bergama, with the information they received from engineering chambers, patriotic scientists from universities, and lawyers advocating for social rights, and with the support of the local administration and the municipality, were quite informed and aware of everything.

The surrounding villagers were sensitive to the toxic operation that would threaten their environment and the lives of their children. They were completely against cyanide gold mining.

On one side, the “people” who want to protect their lives; on the other, the “money moguls of the world.”

The Cyanide Octopus and its poisonous tentacles!

Who wasn't among the cyanide companies:

German Metallgesellschaft, German Dresdner Bank, German Degussa, French BRGM, Australian Normandy Poseidon, Canadian Metall Mining, US Newmont, US AAC, British New Scotland Bank. And other companies entering and leaving the country.

Anatolia was a huge pie!

And Bergama was the first slice of this pie!

In those years, TMMOB (Union of Chambers of Turkish Engineers and Architects) was reporting that Bergama was a ‘gateway’ for cyanide miners and that if this gateway were crossed, 560 more cyanide gold mines would be permitted, thus turning the entire country into a cyanide waste dam.

(Kışladağ-Eşme-Uşak open-pit cyanide gold mine: TÜPRAG, owned by the Canadian company El Dorado, which operates it)

***

Imperialism is the modernized form of colonialism in the context of bringing capital to a foreign country.

Its goal, of course, is to exploit the countries it enters; to seize the labor of workers cheaply, to make profits many times over the capital it invests, and to take that away as well.

And brutally at that!

The statement attributed to an African native leader or a Native American chief, which is accepted as having been said 100-200 years ago during the Primitive Colonialism period: “When they came, they had their Books (the Bible) in their hands, and we had our lands. They told us to close our eyes and pray. When we opened our eyes, our lands were gone, and their God remained,” explains the situation very simply.

It seems that now, saying “they have money and we have gold in our lands, and when we open our eyes, they will have more money and gold, and we will have our polluted, poisoned lands” would not be wrong at all!

(Poisons in the Danube river as a result of the waste dam burst at the Baia Mare cyanide gold mine in Romania)

Imperialism has no mercy!

Gold has no religion or faith!

Every colonizer, every foreign capital finds collaborators in the new countries it enters.

Imperialism knows well how to “use people”!

There is a word coming from Russian that defines such people: “apparatchik” (tool).

Some sycophants do backflips to curry favor with foreign money moguls!

Such countries are full of “apparatchiks”! Ours too!

Local capitalists are ready to jump on a profitable investment like cyanide gold mining; to become partners, or even to take it over.

For a pittance, some technocrats, bureaucrats, and some civilians are ready to be used.

Even some politicians!

It is not very difficult for imperialism and its local collaborators to find public officials to lean on!

The lie released into the public is enough to convince them: “With the incoming capital, investments will be made, the country will develop, and the welfare of the people will increase.”

Many pretend to swallow this deception and line their pockets!

Some believe it naively!

***

Eurogold, a multinational that came to extract Bergama's gold using cyanide—a US company with German-French state-Australian identities that appeared Canadian—began to staff up in Turkey at the beginning of 1990 as a derivative of another foreign company, ACM (Australian Consolidated Minerals).

Its first General Manager came from ACM's Waihi Martha Hill Gold Mine in New Zealand.

(Gold mine in Waihi, the homeland of the Maori natives of New Zealand, on the other side of the world. Exactly the same as those in Turkey)

It is known that in this region, between 1875 and 1955, thousands of tons of waste contaminated with mercury, arsenic, and cyanide originating from the Waihi gold mines were discharged directly into rivers, and this situation created environmental impacts.

Those places were desolate, and they had not encountered visible strong social reactions.

The Maoris (natives of the New Zealand island), who remained from prehistoric times, were just getting to know the masters of the modern world.

The people of this island called themselves “tangata whenua, people of the land” in their native language.

The Eurogold company, a product of a multinational partnership, was surprised when it encountered the resistance of the people in the work it entered with great enthusiasm in Bergama.

The company's top executive, the Scotsman John McCrodock, who came to the region with the air of a British Governor of India, would never be able to understand the opposition of the Bergama villagers, whom he looked down upon, belittled, and expected to submit.

They were supposedly “bringing civilization” to this region where civilizations were born.

Yet, these lands had seen so many uprisings and rebellions!

When the public's reaction rose and the cyanide-using Eurogold had difficulty obtaining an operating permit, the technocrats it tasked began to engage in self-criticism.

Where had they gone wrong!

One of these self-criticisms is like a handbook on how cyanide companies should behave when they encounter public resistance in places where they want to establish toxic operations:

“How to convince, that is, deceive the public, and how to prevent them from resisting!”

Let's see what one of their paid experts advises the tentacles of the cyanide octopus.

***

(People resisting against cyanide gold in Niğde-Ulukışla)

Engineer Ali Vedat Oygör, who spent most of his life in the service of the cyanide-using Eurogold company, described the situation as follows:

“(Cyanide-using) Company management decided that local and foreign managers and technical staff would settle in Dikili (a coastal town 10 km from the mine site and 28 km from Bergama) by the seaside, and although the work was to be done in Ovacık and surrounding villages (Bergama villages), the project was called the “Dikili Project” for a long time because they did not want the exact location to be disclosed. Of course, this negative appearance began to create a reaction among the local people.”

So the cyanide company did not want to show its trail, it did not want to be conspicuous! It wanted to seize Anatolia's gold quietly!

It meant there were situations they wanted to hide and not let the public and the State notice!

On the other hand, it was understood that being far from the public also cost them points in the eyes of society!

And perhaps the employees of the cyanide company wanted to live in houses with sea views. The island of Lesbos across the way!

Poison to the soil, pleasure against the sea!

Or they were afraid of the people of Bergama!

They sensed the public's reaction and were afraid that something would happen to them.

Engineer Ali Vedat Oygör, who saw no harm in boasting about being a cyanide user, continued to explain:

“… it was aimed to start (immediately) the production of 24 tons of gold, which was calculated to last 8 years for that day. Unfortunately, as we will see later, the plan would not work out due to the company being managed by foreigners, their lack of knowledge of Turkish legislation, and more importantly, the fatal mistakes made because they did not know the Turkish people.”

The criticism was serious: ‘Why didn't you find Turkish collaborators immediately? You tried to do the job on your own? We were here too!’

Having realized this situation or having been warned, the poisoner Eurogold company gave up on Dikili. It set out to build flashy lodgings for its employees near the mine operation in Bergama-Ovacık Village.

They were going to be with the villagers, after all!

They were going to have these buildings constructed between 1999-2004 by the Contractor Architect Akif Ersezgin, who was elected Mayor of Bergama as a “democratic leftist,” was a supporter of the poisoners, and finally joined the conservative party in power.

Politics must be involved in their business!

A.V. Oygör, who said that the company initially pursued an information policy starting from the top, from the bureaucracy, and descending to the local people, continued to advise the poisoners:

“The fact that the Turkish administrative managers in charge during this period had not worked in the mining sector before and could not think about how important the behavior and possible reactions of the local people are in mining was also a major mistake that led the main company to decide on this top-down wrong policy.”

Geological Engineer Vedat Ali Oygör, who did his doctorate at METU and worked as a State official at the MTA in his youth, and who passed information he received from the public to the foreign company, continued to analyze the reasons why the multinational cyanide company could not prevent the public's reaction at the beginning, like a great strategy expert:

“The fact that routine and detailed meetings were not held with the elected leaders and opinion leaders of the local people; the fact that the Bergama Mayor was not visited and informed, even out of courtesy, because the land where the facility would be established was outside the adjacent area of the Bergama Municipality and there was no need to obtain any administrative permission from the Municipality; and the fact that all social and economic activities were carried out in Dikili because company managers generally lived in Dikili, resulted in Bergama being excluded and a communication gap forming between it and the mine.”

“You should have ‘won over’ the anti-cyanide people,” says this official who turned into an expert on convincing the public: “You made a mistake!”. “How can you neglect the public?”

Continuing, Engineer A.V. Oygör began to attack individuals as well:

“In those days, at the request of the General Manager (of the Eurogold company), he struggled for days to sell a piece of land belonging to a family of “real estate agents” who also had a “political side” to the company for the residences planned to be built for company managers in Dikili (by the seaside). As a result of both the land not being suitable for construction and the project being abandoned, the land was not purchased.”

“And perhaps, after that day (this real estate agent, who had previously acted as an intermediary for the company to buy land for the mine operation) began to organize intense environmentalist actions against the company. If the company managers could have foreseen what might happen in the future back then, would they still have not bought that land?”

That's it!

How easy!

“If only you had bought the real estate agent's land in Dikili”!

“Just as land can be bought, people can also be bought,” says the warning engineer: “Why didn't you buy it?”

The great philosopher Karl Marx said in his giant book “Capital,” which still sheds light on our day, that “gold buys everything.”

Eurogold's mercenaries had also begun to throw mud at the environment.

There would be more to come.

What else would they invent to smear the anti-cyanide people!

“German foundations, this and that”!

Imperialism and its puppets use every method to suppress their opponents!

As in Bergama, they take the people assigned by the State on trips abroad; as in Elazığ-İliç, villagers are given money in advance; and in the Çöpler cyanide mine disaster, money is offered to the families of the workers who died to keep them quiet.

(No comment)

***

It was with such events that happened thirty years ago that the cyanide gold miners settled in Anatolia.

The Cyanide Octopus wrapped the country in its poisonous tentacles.

In addition to foreigners, local capitalists also got involved.

Now they are everywhere!

They are poisoning the soil for a handful of gold.

Living life is disappearing.

What savagery!

It seems the cyanide users have learned many lessons from Bergama's green resistance to carry out their business.

And the people of Anatolia:

“Cyanide company, leave our town,” they say everywhere!

(Source: https://www.academia.edu/20658145/BERGAMA_D%C4%B0REN%C4%B0%C5%9E%C4%B0) /// https://alivedatoygurmadencilik.wordpress.com/2018/01/06/ovacik-altin-madeni-bugunlere-nasil-geld i////

(https://www.bloomberght.com/turkiye-de-2001-2017-arasinda-toplam-273-ton-altin-uretildi-2098458?page=2)

Sefa Taşkın

21.09.2025

Karşıyaka-Dikili/İzmir