On August 5, tens of thousands of people marched to a mining site in Turkey’s northwestern Kaz mountain region, protesting the environmental damage inflicted by mining operations of the Canada-based Alamos Gold.
Protesters said that the development of the mine in the Kaz mountains would lead to the poisoning of the local water supply and water in the dam in the nearby Canakkale city. Activists claimed that Doğu Biga Madencilik, the local subcontractor of Alamos Gold, cut more than 195,000 trees for the development of the mine.
MorningStar reported that protests against the development of mining infrastructure began on July 26. Several organizations, including the People’s Democratic Congress, as well as the Union of Turkish Chambers of Engineers and Architects, held solidarity marches. The Kaz Mountain Fraternity group was also formed by several environmental and rights groups to defend the mountain range from exploitative mining.
The Canakkale provisional committee of the Communist Party of Turkey (TKP) also joined the protest march, raising slogans such as ‘Socialism against looting’.
In its weekly podcast “Voice of TKP”, the party said that the “construction of a “national garden” on Lake Salda, declaring the Mount Munzur as a mining site, giving the historic train station building in Ankara to a private university, and the destruction in Kaz Mountains cannot be seen separately. The struggle against this attack, where political power is working arm in arm with the capitalists, must not remain at regional levels but a total struggle should be mounted.”
“Within the framework of these demands, we will oppose this plunder by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the capitalists. We once again declare that we will continue to fight for our future from the Kaz Mountains to Munzur,” TKP added.
