Women pioneers of the resistance against LİMAK Holding Company’s efforts to expand a lignite mine for a thermal power plant in Akbelen Forest in İkizköy, Milas district of Muğla: “We can say that this resistance is undertaken mostly by women, because here is primarily women’s field. We feed from these forests, we breathe from these forests.”
The Akbelen Forest in Muğla’s Milas was cut down in order to provide the Yeniköy Kemerköy Thermal Power Plant operated by the LİMAK Holding with lignite.
The villagers of İkizköy, where the forest is located, have been waging a struggle in the face of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry permission to open a lignite mine in the 740-decare Akbelen Forest.
Villagers and environmentalists sued the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and the General Directorate of Forestry by applying to the Muğla 1st Administrative Court. Receiving the defense of the administration, the court ruled for an expert examination in the forest.
Not waiting for the court ruling, the Directorate General of Forestry came to the forest with excavators on July 17 and started cutting trees. In response, the people of İkizköy filed a criminal complaint against the officials of the Directorate General for “misconduct in office.”
The cutting of trees stopped thanks to the struggle of the villagers who put up tents and started keeping watch at the entrance of the forest.
In two separate trials, the administrative courts have given decisions of stay of execution for Muğla’s Akbelen forest, where the villagers and life defenders have been struggling against LİMAK Holding’s efforts to expand a lignite mine for a thermal power plant.
Speaking about the current situation in the region in the wake of these two court decisions, İkizköy Environment Committee Spokesperson Esra Işık says, “It has made us so happy after all these efforts. But we are still on watch in the same place.”
Women pioneers of the İkizköy Resistance
Nejla Işık, the Spokeswoman for İkizköy Environment Community, who was one of the first to run to the forest when she heard about the trees having been cut down, on her experience of the first day: “When I said “I can’t breathe” on that video, I truly couldn’t breathe, as my trees, my forest was gone. Because when they can’t breathe, I can’t breathe. I am going to fight for these forests to the last drop of my blood. I am going to sacrifice my life if that’s what it takes.”
“Here is primarily women’s field”
Işık states that since they live in a touristic area, their spouses always work in the central areas, therefore there are more women in the village, the forests are also a business area for women, and therefore this resistance is very important for local women: “We can say that this resistance is undertaken mostly by women, because here is primarily women’s field. We feed from these forests, we breathe from these forests. Our animals are here, our job is here. If these forests disappear, our animals, our jobs, our lives will be destroyed” she says
“We will not let them take our lives away from us”
Aytaç Yakar is another protestor in İkizköy. Yakar states that she did not want to leave her homeland: “We don’t want money, we want to stay in our country. We do not want our nature, our living space to be destroyed. When you plant an olive tree, it gives you an olive in ten years. We have given all those efforts, we have a life here. We, especially women, make a living here. Men are outside the district, but as women, we are in the village. We will not let them take away our lives,” she says.