The Black Sea under attack (3) | The company behind the Çöpler disaster is opening a mine similar to the one in Artvin

Following the disaster on February 13, 2024, which caused the deaths of 9 workers, the Canadian-US company SSR Mining transferred its 80 percent stake in the Çöpler Gold Mine to Cengiz Holding for 1.5 billion dollars... 20 percent of Çöpler belongs to Çalık Holding. 

SSR Mining also transferred its 80 percent stake in the Hod Gold Mine in Artvin to Çalık Holding. The main shareholder in the Hod Gold Mine is now Çalık Holding with 85 percent.

According to Hod Gold Mine Public Relations Manager Sadiye Çidem, the Hod Gold Mine, operated under the name Artmin Madencilik, is now 85 percent owned by Çalık Holding and 15 percent by foreign investment funds... 

In Çanakkale, the mining fields of another Canadian company, Alamos Gold, were purchased by Nurol Holding. Controversial and litigated gold mines in Turkey are falling into the hands of holdings close to the government one by one... 

NOTHING ELSE CAN BE DONE

These days, feverish work is noticeable at the Hod Gold Mine... Tunnels and roads are being built, and work for the mine's management and processing facilities is continuing at full speed...

(Preparatory work at the Hod Mine) 

The village of Yukarı Maden, formerly known as "Hod," still has a name, but it is as if it no longer exists... Most of the village houses have been demolished because they were in the middle of the mining area... In other words, it is another village wiped off the map... Just like in Çöpler and Akbelen... 

The village school has been transferred to the mining company... The village headman's office is right across from it... Mine workers who saw us arrive surrounded us. We introduced ourselves and started a conversation. 

The mine's Public Relations Manager Sadiye Çidem and the mine workers repeated the usual rhetoric about jobs, employment, and investment. When Public Relations Manager Sadiye Çidem looked up, pointed to the high mountains around us, and said, "Nothing else can be done here except mining..." it deeply offended the people of Artvin... Then, the usual platitudes like "If it weren't for mines, we couldn't use phones or cars... There is no life without mines" were repeated as always... Sadiye Çidem worked at the Bergama Gold Mine, which was the first cyanide gold mine in Turkey, when it opened in 2001: "Look, years have passed and nothing happened in Bergama," said Çidem, and then described another mine in Havran as a successful example of rehabilitation.

The third toxic waste dam in Bergama is about to be full... There is an increase in cancer cases in the region. Furthermore, there is the issue of "mine waste" that has been leaking poison for 85 years in Balıkesir-Balya, very close to Bergama and Havran... Of course, these issues are not on Sadiye Hanım's agenda... 

(Demolished village houses for the Hod Gold Mine) 

LOOK AT BALYA 

In the mine, which was operated by the French under the name "Karaydın Mines" from 1878 to 1940, 400 thousand tons of lead were extracted and sent to France. They laid a private railway between Balya and Bandırma to transport the ore they extracted first to the port of Bandırma and then to France. When the young Republic of Turkey, led by Atatürk, demanded, "Let us know what you are extracting," the French company refused, and the mine was closed. In other words, colonial mining in the region was ended. 85 years have passed, and the waste from this closed mine in Balya continues to spread poison in the region; it cannot be stopped. 

The issue was also brought up in the TBMM (Grand National Assembly of Turkey) Çöpler Disaster Research Commission... In the session held on April 30, 2024, DEM Party Tunceli MP Ayten Kordu asked Deputy Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Abdullah Tancan: Citizens living in the Balya region are complaining a lot, why can't the toxic waste of this mine be stopped?

(General view of the Hod Gold Mine area)

When Deputy Minister Tancan was unaware of the issue, the answer came from Şafak Ocak, Head of the Metallic Mines Department of the General Directorate of Mining and Petroleum Affairs (MAPEG): "I assume the slag the honorable MP is referring to was also operated during the French period. It is a pile that has been coming from those times to the present and has been studied many times... It is slag that cannot be rehabilitated at the moment..." 

2.5 million tons of non-rehabilitatable slag! In other words, we are talking about a pile that might leak its poison forever... On the other hand, at the summit of Madra, on the hills of Lapseki, at the foot of Uşak, and right next to İliç, hundreds of millions of tons of waste rock mountains, hundreds of millions of tons of heap leach mountains, and tens of millions of tons of toxic waste dams continue to rise right next to our citizens, next to villages and cities... So, while you cannot rehabilitate 2.5 million tons of waste, you are piling hundreds of millions of tons into Turkey's living spaces every year... These are the facts... 

(Demolished village houses) 

HOD VILLAGE HOUSES DEMOLISHED

Many houses in Hod village have been razed to the ground... The village headman still lives there... His helplessness and confusion are written all over his face... His village is being wiped off the map, but he is happy because he made his children and relatives workers at the mine... 

Today, unfortunately, all state institutions act like ushers for mining companies... Citizens and villagers have been left face-to-face with company representatives and the gendarmerie... Most of them see what is happening to them as God's will, saying, "Our state would not allow anything wrong." But there are also those who do not accept this situation. Those who struggle to protect their villages, fields, pastures, highlands, forests, and water sources from mining cartels and state institutions find the state's gendarmerie, police, and the rude and aggressive representatives of the companies against them. 

We are facing such an absurd and unbelievable picture...

PEOPLE FORCED INTO MINING

Local people, villagers, and young people are being made dependent or forced into mining... They call it a "breadwinner"... People whose villages are damaged and whose mountains and forests where they were born and raised are torn apart are sad... They cannot find a way out... I had asked the villagers in Manisa-Turgutlu Çaldağı who cut down the forests they grew up in for a nickel mine: "How can you stomach this?" They had said, "What can we do, brother? If we don't cut them, they make others cut them; at least we earn a few pennies." 

Bright young people who graduated from Mining Engineering and Environmental Engineering departments of universities also work in these mines. Most are idealistic and strive to ensure no harm is done. When you talk to them, they say, "Brother, this is our homeland too; we wouldn't allow anything wrong first," but unfortunately, those blinded by greed for money and rent sacrifice them like small change while committing wrongs. They immediately sacrifice these young engineers and workers as the ones responsible for the wrong decisions made or the right decisions that could not be made. 

The Çöpler Disaster is a very striking example of what I am describing... The Çöpler Disaster book was written for this reason... 

WE ARE IN CERATTEPE

On my third day in Artvin, with special permission from the Provincial Directorate of Environment, we went up to the famous Cerattepe Copper Mine operated by Cengiz Holding... The Cerattepe Mine is at the summit of Cerattepe mountain, on the slopes of which the Artvin city center is located.  

(Cerattepe Mine entrance. Cable car system in the background) 

Cerattepe is one of those unique mountains that covers the geography of Artvin. On its steep slopes, there are more than 20 different tree species such as spruce, fir, Scots pine, beech, oak, chestnut, alder, linden, hornbeam, maple, ash, elm, and birch... The Artvin mountains, which the Hod Public Relations Manager said "Nothing else can be done here except mining," have such an ecosystem...  

The people of Artvin fought a great struggle not to let that mine open in the middle of that paradise. Although they won the court cases, they opened that mine with lawless administrators and administrative decisions that circumvented the law. In Cerattepe, 500 thousand tons of ore are extracted annually, meaning an average of 1,400 tons of ore per day... The copper ore extracted from underground mines is crushed and then lowered to the banks of the Çoruh river by a cable car system. From there, it is loaded onto trucks and transported to Murgul Copper Enterprises. 

(Manager Mustafa Yazıcı explains at Cerattepe)

Yes, thousands of trees were cut down while facilities were being built at the summit of Cerattepe, mine gallery entrances were opened, and even a villa was built for the owner of the holding, Mehmet Cengiz. They call it a "guesthouse." Mine Manager Mustafa Yazıcı and his team welcomed representatives from the Green Artvin Association and three journalists, including myself, with smiling faces. Manager Mustafa Yazıcı is also from Rize. He is a fellow villager of the late former Prime Minister Mesut Yılmaz... He has a talkative personality. He talks about the benefits of the mine non-stop, but also repeats at every opportunity that they have no harmful effects. Environmental Engineer Fulya Hanım also explains at length how the groundwater contaminated with heavy metals from the mine is made harmless. 

THE RESPONSIBLE PARTY IS ALWAYS THE WORKERS

Since gallery mining is carried out in Cerattepe and ore processing processes are not applied, environmental destruction is relatively less, but it is not non-existent... When Tolga Odabaş, a professor in the delegation, showed the video of the mine's toxic waste water poured into the Hatila Valley last year, they didn't know what to say at first. Then, the mine's previous Environmental Engineer was immediately blamed. They said it was the Environmental Engineer's mistake and that they had terminated his employment. In other words, the classic policy of blaming the employee and avoiding responsibility. 

(Cerattepe North Gallery entrance)

It is a mine that hollows out Cerattepe; thousands of tons of dynamite are exploded inside. Waterways are damaged. The exploded dynamite inevitably creates destruction inside the mountain. They insist that they are at a point far from the city, but no one knows what will happen in the next step. 

Let's open one in Arhavi... Let's open one in Hod... Let's add 200 thousand more decares to Murgul... Let's build an open-pit mine over 24 villages in Çayeli... Similar scenarios are being repeated in Trabzon, Ordu, Giresun, and Gümüşhane... 

Turkey and the Black Sea do not need destruction projects that darken the lives of tens of thousands of people by saying "we employ 100-200 people," but rather life projects... 

İbrahim Gündüz