Diversity of HES Opposition Movement in Turkey: Black Sea Region Cases
Diversity of HES Opposition Movement in Turkey: Black Sea Region Cases

Summary/Abstract: This paper aims to grasp the raising environmental grassroots movement after 2000 throughout Turkey, as it seems much different from traditional, urban, hierarchical and professional environmentalism. For the first time, rural people developed hundreds grassroots movements throughout the country challenging thousands of smallscale hydroelectric power plant (HES) projects. The field study is based on the analysis of environmental activities, organization and approaches to science and technology, economy, politics in Black Sea Region where the grassroots movement is much significant. After two years of following hundreds of cases, three fields are chosen that are different in terms of organization and politics, then 27 semistructured interviews were conducted on the field. Field study shows that rural and local people, defending their living space, not only joined the environmental protests but also asked to join decisionmaking mechanisms about their livelihood. The threat to livelihoods dialectically makes passive rural people become active citizens defending their ecosystem. Environmental grassroots movement shows civic potential of their communities and leads them to participate into decision-making. Rural people demand to decide about their lives instead of representatives and bureaucrats. Moreover, they strongly criticize national and international environmental NGOs that avoid challenging HES projects and acting together with corporate and state organizations.

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