Armed attack on Ilisu construction workers – Dam construction halted

Fol­low­ing a series of events includ­ing dis­mals, an armed assault, injuries and arson, work­ers have left the Ilisu Dam and Hydro­elec­tric Pow­er Plant con­struc­tion site, thus bring­ing work to a halt. These events show how dan­ger­ous, risky and destruc­tive a project we are con­fronting.

On 19 June (Fri­day), 5 work­ers were dis­missed from work by the Malami­ra com­pa­ny. Malami­ra (based in Ankara with roots in Diyarbakır) employs most of the work­ers at the con­struc­tion site. It replaced oth­er com­pa­nies at the Ilı­su Project when con­struc­tion resumed in Decem­ber 2014 at Ilı­su vil­lage in Dargeçit dis­trict in Mardin province. While meet­ing with Mala Mira Com­pa­ny man­agers on behalf of the dis­missed work­ers and to present demands for union­iza­tion, work­ers were fired upon by the body­guards of the employ­ers and the project direc­tor. The injured work­ers (Ali İnan, 27; Ömer Ekin­ci, 26; and Ömer Erol, 19) are still receiv­ing treat­ment hos­pi­tals.

In response to this, oth­er work­ers and rel­a­tives of the injured – some of whom live in vil­lages close to the Ilı­su Dam – pro­ceed­ed to the scene. Pro­test­ers set fire to offices, heavy equip­ment and vehi­cles belong­ing to the com­pa­ny. As the protest grew, a large num­ber of armored vehi­cles, spe­cial forces, riot police, water canons and sol­diers were dis­patched to the Ilı­su Dam con­struc­tion site.

Because of these events, approx­i­mate­ly 1000 work­ers did not work and returned to their places of res­i­dence with their lug­gage. Thus con­struc­tion work at the Ilisu Dam has been halt­ed.

In and of itself, the halt­ing of the Ilisu Project, which rep­re­sents a huge social, cul­tur­al and eco­log­i­cal cat­a­stro­phe for a greater region, is a pos­i­tive devel­op­ment. How­ev­er, the events wit­nessed over the past three days show how prob­lem­at­ic the Ilisu Project is for region­al peace and tran­quil­i­ty.

The Ilisu Project was halt­ed in the sum­mer of 2014 fol­low­ing the inter­ven­tion of PKK (HPG) guer­ril­las, and con­struc­tion began again with the engage­ment of Malami­ra com­pa­ny in Decem­ber 2014. Malamira’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Ilı­su con­sor­tium despite the ongo­ing high poten­tial for local con­flicts, shows that in pur­suit of prof­it this com­pa­ny did not take into con­sid­er­a­tion the social, eco­log­i­cal and polit­i­cal risks of the project.

Not only those who fired weapons, but the com­pa­ny man­agers be held account­able for this armed attack.

The Ilisu Project, which is a sym­bol of unfair­ness, injus­tice and social-cul­tur­al destruc­tion, must halt­ed as soon as pos­si­ble and debat­ed thor­ough­ly.

Note: You may use attached pho­tographs by acknowl­edg­ing that they were tak­en by DIHA (Dicle Haber Ajan­si /Tigris News Agency)

 Ini­tia­tive to Keep Hasankeyf Alive (www.hasankeyfgirisimi.net)