MÊRDÎN - Villagers have reacted against the dynamite mining activities of Cengiz Holding's Eti Bakır in the villages of Şemrex (Mazıdağı) district of Mêrdîn (Mardin), which caused cracks in their houses.

 

Cengiz Holding's Eti Bakır Metal Recovery and Integrated Fertiliser Factory, which carries out mining activities in Gola Gulê, Şemika, Girêsor, Kufrak, Deşan and Teznê rural neighbourhoods of Şemrex district of Mêrdîn, uses dynamite in its activities. Almost every day, special machines are used to detonate dynamite placed about 50 metres deep into the ground, causing cracks in the houses of the citizens who have to live under the earthquake effect. While there is almost no house in the village without cracks, citizens are worried about the collapse of their houses.

 

Gola Gulê village, which is one of the villages where cracks in the houses, was evacuated and burnt down by the state in 1993 as a result of opposition to the imposition of the village guard. In 2005, when the return to the village started, cracks appeared in almost all of the newly built houses. Villagers expressed their reactions by stating that they did not want to leave their villages, to which they had returned, this time because of the works of Cengiz Holding.

 

Sinan Işık stated that they called the director of Eti Bakır and Süleyman Bölünmez, a former Justice and Development Party (AKP) MP who was in charge of logistics for Cengiz Holding, to their house and said: "They tried to escape from the house because they thought there was an earthquake when dynamite was detonated. I told them not to run away, that we are in this situation every day, that we live with the feeling of an earthquake every day. We asked them to solve this problem. They did not solve it. Eti Bakır explodes dynamite and our houses shake. There are cracks all over our houses. We are trying to live in this situation."

 

Azad Işık showed the cracks in his house and stated that they were afraid to enter their houses because of the cracks. "They have turned everywhere into a work site. We do animal husbandry, but they did not even leave a place to graze the animals. They have banned everywhere, there is no place to look after animals. If it continues like this, we will have to leave our houses and go away. There is no way we can stay in these houses anymore. Dynamite is exploding 200 metres from our house. High doses of explosions are made, our houses shake more than an earthquake. We repair our house every year, but the same thing happens again. If we had not repaired it, these cracks would be wider now," he said.  

 

'WE HAVE NOWHERE TO GO'

 

Adil Aktaş said: "We had to migrate in 1993. Now we have returned to our village. We rebuilt our houses with difficulty. This time, all of our houses have cracked due to the dynamite exploded. We want them to find a solution for this. They left us no life here. I spent 1 million 500 thousand liras on this house and it has not been completed yet. But due to the explosions, cracks occurred all over the house. We are poor people, we have nowhere to go if our house collapses on our heads." 

 

MA / Ahmet Kanbal