The Social Impacts of the Ilisu dam project

‘We don’t own the title deeds to our land, so we won’t get any compensation. We don’t want the dam.’ (Villager in the region around Ilisu, to researchers from the Kurdish Human Rights Project, September 1999)

It is hard to imagine just how enormous the social impact of the proposed Ilisu dam will be. The dam will force the involuntary resettlement of 25,000 people, the majority of them ethnic minority Kurds – and will affect a further 11,000. Many see it as part of a wider strategy of ethnically cleansing the area of Kurds, who already suffer widespread human rights abuses and discrimination as a result of Turkish government policies. Since 1984, the region where the dam is to be built has been devastated by an armed conflict between the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and the Turkish State (a regime the UK helps to arm). Around three million people have been displaced, 3,000 villages partially or totally destroyed, and over 30,000 people killed. Despite the recent PKK decision to pursue a peaceful political solution to the as yet unresolved Kurdish question, many parts of the region remain a war zone.

Astonishingly, the project promoters don’t actually have any firm figures about how many people the dam will displace. A June 1999 report by the UK company, Balfour Beatty, which leads the construction consortium, first claimed that fewer than 15,000 people would be affected, but later suggested a figure of 12-16,000 people. But the company’s use of data has been highly selective. Numerous discrepancies can be seen in their figures. Far more research is needed to put together an accurate picture of the region. According to a study commissioned by the UK government, 36,000 people will be affected. Among these are several thousand people forced out of the local area by Turkish security forces over the last two decades, many of whom still hope to return home.

Communities will be split up and separated. Rural families are destined to end up in towns or urban slums. Unemployment and poverty await. Their vibrant culture and traditional ways of life risk being shattered. But political tensions and human rights abuses in the region mean that it extremely difficult to put together a full picture of the dam’s impacts.

Despite years of planning for Ilisu’s construction, a resettlement plan has still not been drawn up. When Stephen Byers, the UK Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, announced conditional approval for export credit for the project in December 1999, one of the conditions he attached was for a resettlement programme ‘which reflects internationally accepted practice and includes international monitoring’. But international guidelines have already been ignored. They clearly state that any resettlement plan should involve local people as early as possible in the project. In Ilisu this has not happened. The dam was first planned in 1954. For years, no-one consulted local affected communities. A report commissioned by the UK government and released earlier this year found that:

- "Local stakeholders have been waiting for more than 20 years to be informed directly about resettlement, despite the fact that the project design was approved by the government in 1982";

- "Open, consultative processes are not part of the institutional culture or political system";

- "Local stakeholders believe that they have no forum to express their concerns over adequate compensation for expropriated assets, decisions over new settlement locations and loss of social and cultural capital".

In response to international pressure, Turkey has appointed Semor, a local firm, to work on a resettlement plan. The company has little experience of resettlement; its main line of business is tourism and seminar organisation. Basic socio-economic information on the area does not exist. Without reliable data, the Turkish government will not be in a position to provide adequate compensation. It is estimated that about 40% of villagers do not have a legal title to their property, and land ownership is often ill-defined. The practical problems are enormous. A full survey would take years of fieldwork. Time is running out – and the developers are keen to start work. The dam is already shown on maps of the area. It is totally unrealistic to believe that a detailed and accurate resettlement plan can be produced.

So far most local people remain ignorant about their fate. One villager said, ‘Turkey has never supported us. If they flood us here, then God knows where they are going to send us.’ Fear and distrust pervade the region, which has been a war zone for 16 years. A recent report in The Times newspaper (17^th April 2000) revealed just how little information has been made public. ‘Nobody has come,’ a woman from Hasankeyf told the reporter. ‘We don’t know what to do. We heard that they would come but still they didn’t.’

Any attempts at consultation have been minimal. Recent meetings held by Semor with local people have been farcical. Few dare to speak out against government plans in the tense political climate.

One of the conditions attached to UK support is ‘independent monitoring’. All the evidence suggests that Turkey will do whatever it can to prevent effective monitoring. In August 1999, the head of Turkey’s dam building industry told Channel Four News that ‘Just because we are borrowing money doesn’t mean that international creditors … should have a final say on how people live or what we should do about it … this is something we will not accept.’ Endless questions are left unanswered. Who will act as monitors? What powers will they have if international standards are not reached?

The chances of a monitor being allowed free access to the area seem slim. When the Times reporter, Ann Treneman, visited the Ilisu region recently, she made sure in advance that all her documents were in order (The Times, 17^th April 2000). But in just one day she was followed by 41 different men and a tank.

A glance at Turkey’s record on resettlement schemes crushes any hope that proper procedures will be followed. Nor is there much hope of proper compensation. Laws exist providing rights to those evicted by such projects, but these are largely ignored in practice in a region of ongoing political tension. For instance, in the building of the Ataturk dam, also in Southeast Turkey, the main beneficiaries of compensation were rich landowners. Poor, landless families received little, if anything.

Most local people do not even know that they are entitled to compensation for their homes and land. Many are illiterate and most do not speak Turkish. Using Turkish law to claim compensation is fraught with difficulty. And in a region where abduction, torture and extra-judicial killings are carried out on a daily basis, it is a brave Kurd who dares to file public complaints against the state.

It is clear that the construction of the Ilisu dam will destroy the lives of tens of thousands of people. Even if plans for resettlement or compensation are produced, they will be utterly inadequate for the ethnic Kurds whose hearts and homes lie in the rural villages where they have lived for generations. A tiny minority will gain. The fate of most will be poverty and social upheaval, their culture desecrated, and their lives in tatters.

Given that the prospects for just and fair resettlement, adequate compensation and effective independent monitoring are so bleak, it is inconceivable that the British government should even consider using tax payers’ money to back a project which will have such devastating social consequences.

READ THE UK GOVERNMENT’S OWN REPORTS ON ILISU:
Check out the UK Export Credit Guarantee Department’s own web-site:
http://www.ecgd.gov.uk/whatsnew/data/ilisu.htm