All mines must be closed

This article is my personal manifesto on mining. I hope it becomes the manifesto of society and opposition parties as well. Let's get straight to the point without beating around the bush and state our opinion from the start: No to cyanide, no to gold, no to mining that destroys nature even if operated by the state, and a hard no to private sector mining.

It should not be forgotten that all mines and natural resources, pastures, and natural assets in this country belong to all citizens of the Republic of Turkey and cannot be handed over to a handful of people, even if they were not destroying nature. With the amendment it made to the Mining Law in 2004, the AKP opened agricultural lands, surface and underground water resources, protected areas, national parks, olive groves, and pastures to the plunder of a handful of foreign and domestic mining companies.

With its current structure, mining is not a sector that will increase Turkey's prosperity as claimed. The share of mining in national income is only 1.36 percent. It is possible to produce much more value than 1.36 percent in the agricultural sector with very small incentives, instead of destroying the environment and agricultural lands.

All mining licenses operating in Turkey, as well as those not operating but waiting in the pockets of middlemen, must be canceled. All mines must be nationalized without compensation. If possible, all mining activities, including those by the state, should be halted throughout the AKP's term. However, for the post-AKP period, mining activities that do not have a negative impact on forests, pastures, agricultural lands, water basins, and residential areas should only be allowed to continue with majority shares held by the state and local governments. The experiences we have had in the recent past show that the domestic and foreign private sector, which disregards human life and nature in Turkey, has no right to engage in mining.

Starting with gold, silver, copper, and open-pit coal, all mining activities that pollute the environment should be decided upon by future generations, not the current one. Our generation, especially during the AKP era, has polluted the environment more than necessary.

In mining, as in the era of Gazi Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, exploration and extraction activities should be under the leadership and responsibility of the MTA (General Directorate of Mineral Research and Exploration), and processing activities under Etibank. Simple mining activities such as natural stone quarrying should be carried out in conjunction with local governments.

The environmental impact assessments of all mines should be conducted by councils composed of the public, universities, and national and local volunteer NGOs.

WE ARE BEING EXPLOITED LIKE AFRICA

The export of minerals as raw materials, especially boron, must be banned. Turkey sells one ton of boron ore as raw material for 384 dollars, and in return for one ton of product, it can only buy 150 grams of processed boron derivative. The difference shows a typical colonial country. 1 dollar to 7000 dollars. In space and defense industries, this gap goes up to 1 dollar to millions of dollars. Moreover, 83 percent of the world's boron reserves are in Turkey.

Regarding the technology and know-how needed for the operation and processing of mines, cooperation with the domestic and foreign private sector can be pursued, provided that majority shares remain with the public. If the private sector does not enter into such partnerships, or if there is insufficient technology for mineral processing and value creation, the operation and processing of the mines should be left to future generations until that technology is produced. There is no country in the world that has developed and reached prosperity through raw material mining. If that were the case, the richest countries in the world today would be African countries.

The issue is not limited to gold mining. The technology applied in closed and open-basin coal mining is pathetic. While countries use robots in closed mining to ensure safety and achieve high production capacities at low costs, we are enriching a handful of people with technologies that send our people to their deaths and destroy nature.

Regardless of the economic benefit, we do not have the right to destroy the right to life of future generations, nature, water resources, soil, agricultural lands, and pastures. And furthermore, I repeat emphatically that there is no major contribution or prosperity increase provided by mining to the country's economy. Its share in total national income is only 1.36 percent. Its share in exports is 2.5 percent, and its share in imports is 3.2 percent... Turkey's total agricultural product imports are 23 billion dollars. Mining exports are one-fourth of agricultural product imports. Instead of handing over nature, forests, underground and surface water resources, agricultural lands, and pastures to a handful of rich people for meager mining activities, if we were to plan and incentivize agriculture with just a small fraction of the resources allocated here, we could reduce agricultural imports, earn much more income, and on top of that, stop inflation in food prices. But the government has no such concern.

Yes, mines have strategic importance. But in the world we live in, population growth, migration, climate change, and developments in freshwater reserves bring the strategic importance of agriculture to the forefront even more. It is necessary to analyze mining activities in Turkey together with their economic size and the costs they cause.

The damages caused by gold mining are too great to be covered by the value of the gold. When you type “Tema Vakfı altın madeni animasyon filmi” (TEMA Foundation gold mine animation film) into the Google search engine on the internet, a 5-minute film will appear. I recommend you watch it. You will see what kind of irreparable destruction gold mining causes. According to the United Nations, more than 70 major waste mining dam accidents have occurred in the world in the last 30 years. These accidents cause many health problems such as heart failure, blood diseases, cancer, and kidney and mental retardation. Gold mining destroys the nature, soil, and water that have nurtured life for millions of years in an irreversible way.

GAP IS ALSO IN DANGER

The disaster we recently experienced in İliç, Erzincan, is described as Turkey's Chernobyl. 10 million cubic meters of cyanide-laced soil have slid for 800 meters for now. With the humidity in the air and rain, it will spread to a much wider area, to surface and underground waters, and to agricultural lands. How can gold mining with cyanide be allowed or tolerated at a distance of 350 meters from the Euphrates River? Moreover, in a region that is the most risky in terms of earthquakes... I don't know if cyanide has leaked into the Euphrates; it hasn't been announced, and I don't think it will be. If it has leaked, it will spread from Erzincan, Sivas, Tunceli, Elazığ, Malatya, Diyarbakır, Adıyaman, Gaziantep, and Şanlıurfa to Syria and from there to the Persian Gulf. The destruction will be very severe.

We built the GAP (Southeastern Anatolia Project) over the years by paying taxes and also enduring high inflation for years. We brought the waters of the Euphrates, which were flowing in vain, together with agriculture. It is still possible to carry out agricultural production with much higher efficiency in the region and feed at least 600 million people. We are sacrificing not only our gold mines and our nature but also the GAP to imperialist companies and their local collaborators.

During the AKP era, we have turned into a colonial African country in gold mining. The companies operating gold mines in Turkey are listed on the Canadian and Australian stock exchanges. For some reason, the names of these companies constantly change on these exchanges, and their apparent owners change. 80 percent of the gold produced also goes abroad. 20 percent belongs to a Turkish company owned by certain individuals. The share received by the state has almost no contribution to the public. The bribes that the mining company gave to those living in the region in advance so that they would not speak out or file lawsuits, and the protocols they signed in exchange for these bribes, are another document of shame. Patriotic lawyers and attorneys can reveal whether such an immoral and dirty protocol has any legal validity. But such a dirty protocol and contract have no moral validity whatsoever.

We are failing not only in gold mining but also in copper mining and open/closed coal mining. We are mining under primitive conditions like those of the Industrial Revolution, and we lose hundreds of our mine workers underground every year. You need to see with your own eyes the open-pit coal mining and massacre carried out by Limak and İC Holding in the Akbelen forests and olive groves of Milas for power plants.