Sinkholes

Will inflation fall? Will price hikes stop? Will Erdoğan’s visit to the CHP Headquarters after 18 years end his polarizing politics? While we were lost in the hot topics of the agenda, a reality we ignored hit Turkey sooner than we expected!

Extreme heat!

These temperatures are different from the climate conditions we are accustomed to. Starting from this year, we will experience the effects of global warming caused by climate change more severely. Looking at the world map, Turkey is among the countries that will be most affected by the climate crisis. But the public is neither interested in this nor being informed about it.

We are going through a period where we should be panicking. All meteorological models predict a serious decrease in precipitation, especially in the Mediterranean and South Africa. It has been modeled that surface water resources will decrease by 30 percent, and that water stress in the Mediterranean basin, which is 9% at 1.5 degrees, will rise to 17% if it reaches 2 degrees. The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and the Ministry of Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change are aware of this, but they are not informing the public!

DROUGHT HAS BEGUN!

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees recently published a report. It announced that in 2019, 30 million people were displaced due to sudden meteorological conditions and slow-onset hazards linked to climate change.

The increase in drought and the problem of “access to fresh water” will create a new migration crisis!

The High Commissioner for Refugees has warned the world against a new wave of migration. It is reported that by 2050, climate change will cause more than 143 million people to leave their own countries in three regions (sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Latin America).

According to a study published in The Lancet, one of the world's leading medical journals, Turkey is among the leading countries on migration routes that face the risk of encountering a flood of people.

In other words, in the very near future, a new mass of migrants caused by the climate crisis will emerge.

“Ecological Migrants”!

The first stop for people fleeing extreme weather conditions in Asia and Africa and hitting the road to reach clean water sources and food points to the Anatolian geography. However, the UN climate report also shows that Anatolia will be among the regions that will become semi-desertified. These are not models; they are realities we will face in the near future.

The sinkholes in Konya are the most striking example of the water and drought problem we will face in the near future!

Due to illegal wells opened in drought-stricken Konya, 800 sinkholes have formed in the last 10 years!

“Nature is a mirror. And the brightest of mirrors at that,” says Dostoevsky.

Sinkholes, which form as groundwater recedes due to the Ministry of Agriculture's unplanned practices and farmers' wild irrigation methods, now also threaten public safety.

Imagine the land you farm and cultivate suddenly collapsing! It's like walking in a minefield. The depth of the sinkholes is 50-100 meters!

The Ministry of Agriculture, which encouraged farmers in Konya Karapınar, where Turkey receives the least rainfall, to plant corn, which consumes the most water, is the culprit behind the formation of these sinkholes! Farmers who open illegal wells for corn production can no longer find water even at a depth of 200 meters, but they cause the formation of sinkholes.

While “corn” was planted on an area of 880 decares in 1990, this rate has exceeded 100 thousand decares in 2023. The state has provided incentives to farmers for years to produce corn, a crop that consumes excessive water, and this situation has caused groundwater to recede.

Today, unfortunately, farming in the Konya plain is on the verge of extinction because there is no “water”! Farmers whose fields have developed sinkholes are abandoning their lands and migrating. The remaining farmers are hopeless and waiting for a voice from the state.

The public is waiting for incentives from the state to be able to plant wheat, which consumes less water. But there is no answer!

The diameter of the sinkholes has reached up to 1 kilometer, and their depths up to 100 meters. When will our state listen to its villagers?

When that sinkhole forms in the center of Konya?