Villagers from Turkey’s Düzce furious about AKP: ‘We voted for them; where are they at?’
People of Hecinler district of Turkey’s Düzce province had previously objected to the operation of a solid waste disposal facility in their village. Although their legal action resulted in a court decision blocking the operation of the facility based on an environmental impact assessment report, the Municipality of Düzce insisted on proceeding with its operations, overstepping the court decision.
Villagers of Henciler-Esençam area had set up tents in the area to protest, while their litigation was still in process. As the court decision turned out to their favor and the municipality had promised to stop their operations in line with the decision of the court, villagers had stopped their protest.
However, earlier last month, on November 4th, Düzce Municipality wanted to start operating the facility again, showing as their permission a new environmental impact assessment report prepared by İstanbul’s water and sewage administration. Villagers filed a lawsuit against that, as well.
Claiming that their current operations in the area were going to last only for 8 months as a new waste disposal area was being constructed in another district nearby, Düzce municipality wanted to use the Hecinler area again last week.
As the villagers tried stopping the municipality vehicles that had been brought to the area to dump waste, drivers of waste trucks drove towards the protesting villagers, causing four people to get wounded.
Speaking to local Düzce Öncü TV about it, villagers shared their concerns over the insistence of their municipality officials in using their neighborhood as a waste disposal area.
One of the villagers, Mustafa Kalyon, expressed his anger about the issue by referring to the local and parliamentary officials of AKP government. Tok said: ‘You (AKP officials) have no right to have these people go through this pain. Why should thousands of people and the farmers suffer because of only one person (referring to head of municipality)? …We say enough is enough! We voted for you (AKP) for 4 terms with a 90% voting turnout. May you get no benefit from it! Where are our parliamentarians? There is even a minister from our region: where is he at? Where are our president and prime minister? Aren’t we humans? This chief (head of municipality) is dumping this waste here and trying to scold us by saying ‘I have dumped the trash over the head of the villagers’. We heard that! …Mr. Chief, you cannot be as big of a man as someone to make us come over to you! We won’t come to you! You will come to us! Enough! For anyone who is a real person, these words should be clear enough! Now, they should pull these cars out of here, please!”
Stating in disappointment and anger that none of the three AKP parliamentarians of Düzce has come to the area to talk to the residents about their condition and objections for over a year, villagers currently continue their protest just as they did last year.
