Turkish Power Station Has Residents Clutching Their Gas Masks

By Jon Gorvett

ISTANBUL, Turkey, June 7, 2001 (ENS) - Local residents of the Aegean town of Yatagan donned gas masks three times last week, as clouds of poisonous gas swept through the region from the local coal fired thermal power station.

With sulphur dioxide levels reaching 9,000 micrograms per cubic metre - several hundred times above safety levels - local mayor Hasan Hasmet Isik struck out angrily at the nightmare plant.

“That’s enough,” he said, “We’ve had it with this.”

The poison gas cloud came despite assurances from the authorities that a new filtration system had been installed at the plant - a move that had come following widespread protest in the winter over the station’s gas emissions.

“They spent US$80 million on new equipment to clean the gases,” Isik said, “but this has broken down three times in a week.”

The controversial plant and its two neighboring power stations at Gokova and Yenikoy have attracted protest in the past from environmental groups and human rights lawyers.

Turkish power plant when it was under construction in 1985 (Photo courtesy Turkish Electricity Authority) A 1993 court report into the plants concluded that they were destroying the local environment and threatening people’s lives, which led to them being ordered closed. This decision was then backed up by the supreme administrative court in Turkey’s capital, Ankara. However, according to lawyer Noyan Ozkan the authorities then ignored the court decisions and continued operating the plant.

“Three times the government ignored the court decision and issued a decree ordering the plants to stay open - violating the country’s constitution.”

Ozkan and a group of lawyers have taken Turkey to the European Court of Human Rights over the issue, arguing that the Turkish government has violated the European Convention by effectively placing itself above the law.

“The Convention states that all signatories - and Turkey is a signatory - must be in compliance with the principle of the rule of law. If the state doesn’t apply a court ruling, it is violating this principle,” Ozkan said.

The lawyers and the Turkish government have now finished presenting their arguments and Ozkan expects a ruling within the next few months.

Meanwhile, as the local governor ordered the Yatagan plant to close temporarily following Friday’s gas cloud, Turkish newspaper "Radikal" revealed that closing and reopening the plant was costing the state electricity generating company, TEAS, US$30,000 each time.

The daily also revealed that under new privatization arrangements due to come into force by the end of June, TEAS would be obliged to pay any new private operators a daily fee even if the plant produced no electricity.

Since the start of 2000, the Yatagan plant has been closed 50 times. This comes at a time when the country is also facing its worst economic crisis in years.

The operating rights at Yatagan, Gokova and Yenikoy, which are all close to some of the country’s top tourist and archaeological sites, are due to be transferred to the South Aegean Energy Consortium. This group is made up of the Turkish company Bayindir, Park Holding, Britain’s International Power and Mimak.

The transfer has yet to be authorized by the Turkish Treasury, but under the privatization law, the process must be completed by June 30.

However, when and if this process is completed, the legal position of the private companies is uncertain, according to another lawyer involved in the human rights case, Ahmet Okyay.

“The decrees keeping the plants open will no longer have force when the transfer is complete,” he said. “Which means we’ll have to go back to the older court ruling, closing the plants.”

Ozkan also added that the transfer of rights might also make it easier to take action if the plants continued to be a health risk.

“If they were still polluting, then we could take the consortium to the ordinary courts,” he said. “At the moment, we are trying to take the state to court. This is incredibly difficult in Turkey. It’s much easier to struggle with private companies that with the public administration.”

But for local residents, the sulphur dioxide emissions continue to be a serious risk - and one that has now been running for nearly eight years. Doctors and environmentalists fear that the long term effects of the poison gas clouds will be catastrophic. Already, much of the local vegetation has been destroyed and cases of respiratory diseases have skyrocketed.

Another effect has been for residents to vote with their feet and leave the area. “Nobody who can leave stays long here now,” one resident, Nuri Senmur, told ENS. “They told us everything would be fine with the new filters, but what use are they if they don’t work? The pollution now is just as bad as before.”

“They slaughtered the law by keeping the power stations open,” said Okyay, “and they will slaughter the region too.”

http://ens.lycos.com/ens/jun2001/2001L-06-07-03.html

-- Anonymous, June 09, 2001