Battle Rages over Istanbul’s Last Forests

by Nick Ash­down / The Ecol­o­gist

Zekiye Ozdemir and Gulseren Caliskan, both 70, sit staid­ly in their wick­er chairs direct­ly in front of a large iron police bar­ri­er, unde­terred by the cold mist waft­ing down from the grey sky above.

On one side of the fence lies a park­ing lot, now a for­bid­den zone. It’s guard­ed by a hulk­ing water can­non truck and a detach­ment of heav­i­ly armoured riot police, many of their faces con­cealed by black scarves.

On the oth­er side is a group of some 100 activists and con­cerned cit­i­zens protest­ing what they call an attack on one of the few large green spaces left in Istan­bul. They’re hand­ing out tea and snacks from under their makeshift tents and umbrel­las, to stave off the inclement weath­er.

The matron­ly pen­sion­ers blithe­ly chirp away, pay­ing no atten­tion to the dozens of police loom­ing near­by. “We came here to say no to sky­scrap­ers, to pro­tect nature, and to sup­port the youth.”, Ozdemir explains enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly.

Valide­bag Grove – ‘it’s turn­ing upper-mid­dle class house­wives into activists’

In ear­ly Octo­ber, activists col­lect­ed 80,000 sig­na­tures of peo­ple opposed to the Usku­dar Municipality’s con­struc­tion project that will include a small mosque, wed­ding halls, open-air the­aters and arti­fi­cial pools.

The con­struc­tion site is in a park­ing lot on the very edge of Valide­bag Grove – home to some 7,000 trees and sev­er­al his­tor­i­cal build­ings. The grove is in Usku­dar, a hilly, most­ly con­ser­v­a­tive dis­trict on Istanbul’s Asian side.

Hil­mi Turk­men, may­or of Usku­dar Munic­i­pal­i­ty and mem­ber of Turkey’s rul­ing Jus­tice and Devel­op­ment Par­ty (AKP), has called the activists “fake envi­ron­men­tal­ists” and said that “Unfor­tu­nate­ly too much tol­er­ance and good­will dri­ves peo­ple wild and makes them believe that they are right.”

Activists accuse the gov­ern­ment of politi­ciz­ing their cit­i­zens. “They are turn­ing upper-mid­dle class house­wives into activists”, says Cig­dem Cidamli, an envi­ron­men­tal­ist with Istan­bul City Defense.

Police vio­lence – ‘they’re like an army!’

At the crack of dawn on 21 Octo­ber, a police-escort­ed bull­doz­er crept into the park­ing lot and start­ing rip­ping up con­crete. Furi­ous activists called the exca­va­tion unlaw­ful because the legal process was still pend­ing, and start­ed a 24-hour vig­il that still con­tin­ues.

Lat­er that after­noon, an admin­is­tra­tive court sus­pend­ed the con­struc­tion, say­ing the Usku­dar Munic­i­pal­i­ty didn’t have a license for the mosque. When activists announced the stay of exe­cu­tion, police attacked them with tear­gas.

“They’re like an army”, envi­ron­men­tal­ist Onur Akgul says, not­ing there are almost as many cops as activists. Akgul is a mem­ber of North­ern Forests’ Defence, an envi­ron­men­tal group formed after the Gezi protests of 2013, which were also sparked by com­mer­cial devel­op­ment of a cen­tral green space.

On 23 Octo­ber, con­struc­tion resumed despite the court order. “They’re not lis­ten­ing to the law”, Akgul says. “What’s hap­pen­ing now is pure­ly ille­gal.”

Sev­er­al promi­nent activists and a jour­nal­ist have been detained and beat­en by police, to the sur­prise of no one. Cidamli was amongst those detained. “They beat us”, she says. “They threat­ened me, [say­ing] ‘I will fuck you, and kill you, [and] shoot you.’”

On the week­end of 25 – 26 Octo­ber, activists orga­nized a march and a pic­nic, and police respond­ed by erect­ing the iron bar­ri­cade and bring­ing in the riot squad. The fol­low­ing Mon­day, pro­test­ers filled the road with their cards to block exca­va­tion equip­ment, and tow trucks came to remove them, some with the dri­vers still inside.

A cou­ple of weeks lat­er, a group of women tried to enter the con­struc­tion site. One of them promised the riot police “we will just enter the grove, look around, and then leave”, adding “you are also our chil­dren.” When they tried to make their way past the police, they were imme­di­ate­ly pep­per sprayed.

Asian Istan­bul  – the new tar­get for ‘urban trans­for­ma­tion’

The Valide­bag Grove is a pro­tect­ed nat­ur­al site, and a des­ig­nat­ed meet­ing spot dur­ing a nat­ur­al dis­as­ter such as an earth­quake.

The Usku­dar Munic­i­pal­i­ty is try­ing to annul the grove’s pro­tect­ed sta­tus, and activists say that because of Validebag’s loca­tion in an attrac­tive res­i­den­tial neigh­bour­hood, the Munic­i­pal­i­ty wants to tear out trees and build more hous­ing and com­mer­cial cen­tres.

The rul­ing AK Par­ty has been rapid­ly trans­form­ing Istan­bul with a num­ber of ‘urban trans­for­ma­tion’ projects. Crit­ics argue the changes are imple­ment­ed from the top down with very lit­tle pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion or regard for envi­ron­men­tal effects, and that pro-AKP con­struc­tion firms get the most lucra­tive bids.

They say laws have been altered to facil­i­tate hasty con­struc­tion and decrease the role of pro­fes­sion­al orga­ni­za­tions respon­si­ble for ensur­ing high stan­dards.

“Istan­bul has become a city that is con­tin­u­ous­ly under the assault of this urban trans­for­ma­tion and pri­va­ti­za­tion of pub­lic areas”, Cidan­li says. Most of these projects have been under­tak­en on the Euro­pean side of Istan­bul, but accord­ing to Cidan­li, “the Ana­to­lian part of Istan­bul is now under attack.”

Despite a dis­mal envi­ron­men­tal record, Istan­bul recent­ly entered a com­pe­ti­tion to be the Euro­pean Green Cap­i­tal of 2017.

But accord­ing to British con­sult­ing agency World Cities Cul­ture Forum, green spaces in Istan­bul account for only 1.5% of the city – much small­er than oth­er Euro­peans cap­i­tals such as Lon­don (38%), Berlin (14.4%), or Paris (9.40%).

Mosque a Tro­jan horse for com­mer­cial devel­op­ment

Cidan­li fears this con­struc­tion project is the first step in ter­mi­nat­ing Validebag’s pro­tect­ed sta­tus and open­ing the grove to com­mer­cial devel­op­ment. “This is a very prof­it-ori­ent­ed project under the guise of a mosque”, she says. “They will go step by step”, slow­ly nib­bling at the edges of the green space.

She says the munic­i­pal­i­ty tried a month ear­li­er to appro­pri­ate land in Valide­bag from the north with a project to build park­ing lots, but were unable to pro­ceed due to oppo­si­tion. Now, she says, they’re try­ing from the south.

Cidan­li says these projects often start with a mosque because if any­one rais­es con­cerns, they’re accused of being Islam­o­pho­bic in a very reli­gious coun­try. “Maybe they thought that if they say this will be a mosque, nobody would dare to oppose it”, she says.

Pres­i­dent Erdo­gan, who has a pri­vate res­i­dence in Usku­dar and has voiced sup­port for the con­struc­tion project, often attempts to stoke reli­gious sen­ti­ment against his crit­ics.

“Maybe some were uncom­fort­able because it is a masjid [small mosque]”, he told jour­nal­ists on 25 Octo­ber, accus­ing crit­ics of the Valide­bag con­struc­tion of being intol­er­ant of Islam.

The oppo­si­tion Repub­li­can People’s Par­ty (CHP), whose mem­bers have vis­it­ed and voiced sup­port for demon­stra­tors in Valide­bag, imme­di­ate­ly shot back: “They are try­ing to use the mosque card to claim that peo­ple are against places of wor­ship”, CHP deputy Mah­mut Tanal told local news. “This is com­plete­ly false.”

“We don’t have any prob­lem with mosques”, Akgul, the envi­ron­men­tal­ist with North­ern Forests’ Defence says, point­ing out that many of the activists them­selves are devout Mus­lims.

‘We don’t need any more mosques. We need oxy­gen!’

The issue has now been tak­en up by the main oppo­si­tion Repub­li­can People’s Par­ty (CHP). Its Deputy Chair­man Sez­gin Tan­riku­lu sub­mit­ted a par­lia­men­tary ques­tion for Prime Min­is­ter Ahmet Davu­to­glu ear­li­er this month about alle­ga­tions that the Usku­dar Munic­i­pal­i­ty had agreed to turn parts of Valide­bag Grove into a car park. (The link has mys­te­ri­ous­ly been tak­en down but I accessed a cached ver­sion.)

Accord­ing to Tan­riku­lu the con­struc­tion of the mosque is “only for show” and the land will actu­al­ly be allo­cat­ed to a com­pa­ny linked to the rul­ing AK Par­ty com­pa­ny. “What is the name of the com­pa­ny that signed an agree­ment with Üsküdar’s may­or for a car park on Valide­bag Grove?” he asked.

Reli­gious or not, many of the demon­stra­tors are staunch sec­u­lar­ists, and have put up ban­ners bear­ing the por­trait of mod­ern Turkey’s fierce­ly sec­u­lar founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

Some won­der why anoth­er mosque needs to be built in an area that already has 26, four of which are less than 600 metres away. “We don’t need any more mosques, says 70 year-old demon­stra­tor Ozdemir. “We need oxy­gen!”

On Octo­ber 31 the court’s stay of exe­cu­tion was reversed after an appeal, say­ing the project site lies out­side of the pro­tect­ed grove. Some local papers and oppo­si­tion politi­cians accused the Usku­dar Munic­i­pal­i­ty of inter­fer­ing with the legal process, and lawyers rep­re­sent­ing the activists vowed to appeal the court’s rever­sal.

Among them was Tan­riku­lu – who claimed, in his par­lia­men­tary ques­tion, that the Munic­i­pal­i­ty had tried to bypass the deci­sion of the Istan­bul 7th Admin­is­tra­tive Court – which ordered a stop on con­struc­tion at the site – by alter­ing the sheet and par­cel num­bers of the car park.

Despite the unfavourable rul­ing, and the ris­ing atmos­phere of threat and initim­i­da­tion from both gov­ern­ment and police, the pro­tes­tors are hold­ing firm. And Ozdemir remains con­fi­dent of ulti­mate vic­to­ry, insist­ing: “The peo­ple will pre­vail!”