Thousands Join Second Week of Protest against Privatization of Turkey’s Caretta Beach

by MUĞLA / Hur­riyet Dai­ly News

Jan­u­ary 5th, 2015

A vig­il held against the pri­va­ti­za­tion of the pro­tect­ed beach of İzt­uzu on the Mediter­ranean coast will enter its sec­ond week today, with activists mobi­liz­ing to pre­vent a com­pa­ny from build­ing recre­ation­al facil­i­ties on the site, a major nest­ing ground for Caret­ta Caret­ta tur­tles.

Local activists were prompt­ed to action after offi­cials from DALÇEV, the com­pa­ny that won the ten­der to oper­ate the beach facil­i­ties, entered the area with three con­struc­tion vehi­cles around mid­night on Dec. 29, 2014, after a court lift­ed a stay of exe­cu­tion order on the pri­va­ti­za­tion process.

The inci­dent trig­gered fury among local activists, who spon­ta­neous­ly gath­ered near the beach and launched their resis­tance. They cel­e­brat­ed New Year’s Eve in İzt­uzu and thou­sands of activists are now attend­ing the vig­il.

“We were three in the begin­ning. Then we became five. Now our num­ber has reached 2,000 peo­ple,” said Tuğ­ba Özge Musaoğlu, a local who was among the first to join the impromp­tu protest.One of the last untouched seashores along Turkey’s coasts, İzt­uzu is locat­ed with­in an archae­o­log­i­cal site and has a spe­cial pro­tect­ed sta­tus that bans any con­struc­tion on the site. The sandy beach is also glob­al­ly known for being one of the main breed­ing grounds for log­ger­head tur­tles, also known as Caret­ta Caret­ta.

But the beach’s envi­ron­men­tal impor­tance has not pre­vent­ed the author­i­ties’ pri­va­ti­za­tion attempt, which was even­tu­al­ly won by DALÇEV last June, a local com­pa­ny that also has British part­ners.

“We wouldn’t even lay our tow­els in the areas were the tur­tles deposit their eggs. And then, one morn­ing, we learned that con­struc­tion machines had entered the site. This place was ours and we want it to remain like that, because it is the locals who will take care of it the best,” Musaoğlu said.

The par­tic­u­lar­ly pho­to­genic giant tur­tles are on the red list of the Inter­na­tion­al Union for Con­ser­va­tion of Nature (IUCN) due to the destruc­tion of their habi­tat.

Activists have remained at the entrance of the İzt­uzu beach after Gen­darmerie offi­cers refused to allow activists to hold a vig­il inside the pro­tect­ed area.

Legal trou­ble has ensued fol­low­ing the pri­va­ti­za­tion, as the process was ini­tial­ly sus­pend­ed by a court order on June 23, 2014. But the stay of exe­cu­tion was lift­ed in late Sep­tem­ber, with the Muğla Governor’s Office order­ing the author­i­ties of Orta­ca dis­trict, which İzt­uzu is a part of, to evac­u­ate the facil­i­ties at the beach. The pri­va­ti­za­tion was then chal­lenged by the Orta­ca Munic­i­pal­i­ty, with the Muğla Admin­is­tra­tive Court rul­ing for a stay of exe­cu­tion for a sec­ond time. The same court lift­ed the order on Dec. 22, giv­ing the go-ahead to the com­pa­ny to take over the facil­i­ties. But only three days lat­er, a dis­trict court again ruled to sus­pend the exe­cu­tion of the pri­va­ti­za­tion.

Adding fuel to the legal tur­moil, the Envi­ron­ment Min­istry on Jan. 5 con­firmed that the ten­der land had now been tak­en over by the firm “in accor­dance with the can­cel­la­tion of the stay of exe­cu­tion order.”

Human rights abuse

Main oppo­si­tion Repub­li­can People’s Par­ty (CHP) law­mak­er Mah­mut Tanal, who joined the protest at İzt­uzu, said any action regard­ing İzt­uzu would amount to a human rights vio­la­tion. “This would seri­ous­ly hurt Muğla’s tourism, econ­o­my and the right for peo­ple to live in a healthy envi­ron­ment. What the state has to do is pro­tect and devel­op the envi­ron­ment,” Tanal said.

For their part, offi­cials from DALÇEV claim they came to the site after the lat­est rul­ing lift­ing the stay of exe­cu­tion had been announced. “We should nor­mal­ly have tak­en over in June. But the facil­i­ties owned by the Orta­ca Munic­i­pal­i­ty were not giv­en to us. The munic­i­pal­i­ty opened sev­er­al law­suits against us,” said the company’s exec­u­tive com­mit­tee head, Ramazan Oruç, empha­siz­ing that if they did not under­take any action it was due to their “respect for jus­tice.”

He also dis­missed claims that their arrival to the site near mid­night was an attempt to raid the facil­i­ties.

“The governor’s office announced the court deci­sion at 5 p.m. So we entered the facil­i­ties [at night]. We are not here to occu­py. We would have entered dur­ing the morn­ing if the deci­sion had been announced dur­ing the morn­ing,” Oruç said.

The recent trans­fer of author­i­ties regard­ing pri­va­ti­za­tions to governor’s offices instead of munic­i­pal­i­ties has hurt locals as it means they have less con­trol over deci­sions on such sen­si­tive mat­ters.

A recent hos­pi­tal project for sea tur­tles near İzt­uzu also raised con­tro­ver­sy with activists object­ing to the con­struc­tion of the facil­i­ty with­in the pro­tect­ed area. Their action was suc­cess­ful in obtain­ing the can­ce­la­tion of the project but prompt­ed Envi­ron­ment Min­is­ter İdris Gül­lüce to accuse them of fanati­cism.

Many inter­na­tion­al envi­ron­men­tal and ani­mal rights groups, includ­ing the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), expressed their oppo­si­tion to the estab­lish­ment of a hos­pi­tal in İzt­uzu.