On a rainy December afternoon, we drive past the Normandy gold-mine at Ovacik, in the Bergama Valley of the Northern Aegean region of Anatolia.  Olive groves suddenly give way to barren land, dug up and surrounded by rolls of barbed wire -- a wound on the land.  Further up, the tanks and pipes of the mine tower above the huge pit where mud contaminated with cyanide will collect and remain forever toxic.

       We are six in the car: my husband and I, another couple from the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, and Oktay Konyar with his wife Senol.  We are on our way to the village of Narlica, to meet with the peasants.  We grow silent at the sight of the mine.  We stare at the barbed wire, the dug earth, and the towering tanks, in rage and in grief. 

       Graffiti greets us at Narlica.  “No to Cyanide!” -- on every wall facing the village square.  Oktay Konyar raises his two fingers to his mouth and his sharp whistle rings through the village.  Peasants begin to appear from every corner, and they converge on the little coffee shop that’s heated with a woodstove.

       The villagers are angry.

       “Our olives shriveled on the branches this fall,” says an elderly man with a white mustache.  “As soon as the explosions began, a fine dust settled on all the crops.  We're done for.”

       “The water lever has dropped,” says another man.  “Our wells are drying up.  The water has grown cloudy.”

       “Don`t be discouraged.”  Oktay Konyar calls out.  “The mine is illegal.  We shall dismiss them from our lands.  We shall re-plant our olives!  Halkiz, Hakliyiz, Kazanacagiz! We are the people. Our cause is just. We shall win!”

       The men filling the coffee shop repeat after him: “Halkiz, Hakliyiz, Kazanacagiz!” 

       Konyar commands, “Once again!”

       This time, the villagers thunder:  “Halkiz, Hakliyiz, Kazanacagiz!”

       Konyar, a native of Bergama in his late fifties, is the peasants’ leader in civil disobedience.  He is now organizing a peasants’ union, saying that the peasants of Bergama are ready for a place in the political arena, after a decade of resistance to the gold mine.  But Konyar is under a 21-month prison sentence, and is expecting word from the appeal court anyday.

***

       The hills on the Northern Aegean coast are covered with cotton fields, vineyards, olive groves, nut-bearing pines and fig orchards. In spring, blood-red poppies and wild daisies bloom on the roadsides, and the wind is scented with oregano and lavender.  Today’s town of Bergama was a thriving Roman city and healing center named Pergamon two thousand years ago.  With its thermal springs and its fragrant air, it was the city of Asclepios, the God of health.

      Today, tourists visit the remains of the Acropolis, the Temples of Athena, Zeus, Serapis and Trajan, the steep amphitheatre, and the health center, Asclepion, where patients were cured by the sound of water and music in Pergamon.  But if “the New World Order” has its way, Pergamon will become a wasteland.

      In 1992, Eurogold obtained a license from the Turkish Ministry of Energy to look for gold on the hills of Bergama.  17 villages were located within a 10-kilometer radius of the mine site.  At first, the villagers thought the mine would provide them with jobs.  But soon they learnt that Eurogold would leach the metal with cyanide.

      They began to research gold mines.  They learnt that cyanide leaching had caused environmental disasters in the U.S., China, Guyana, Bolivia, Philippines and Zimbabwe. Scientists told them the gold would be taken out of the country and leave the land and the ground water contaminated with cyanide, that nothing would remain alive within a 30-kilometer radius of the mine.  Cyanide leaching would also release other poisons such as arsenic, lead, cadmium and mercury to the environment.  What’s more, a fault line passing through Kaynarca, only 1,5 kilometers away from the mine, posed an earthquake risk that could be catastrophic.

      Bergama’s peasants met with their Mayor and held a news conference to announce these findings.  They said they did not want the gold mine on their hills.  Eurogold officials replied that the cyanide would be kept in strong clay pools and that it would evaporate under the sun.

       The peasants organized under the leadership of Oktay Konyar to dismiss Eurogold from their olive groves.  Konyar had grown up in Bergama, worked in various non-government-organizations and had served as the regional leader of the social democratic Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, Republican People’s Party.  “I knew how un-democratic this country could be,” he says, “ but I also knew that violence would never be a solution.  So we vowed never to violate laws, never to commit any crimes.”

      In November 1994, 652 people from the villages of Camkoy, Ovacik and Narlica launched three lawsuits at the Court in Izmir, to get the mine’s license cancelled.  But the regional court ruled in favour of Eurogold and the peasants took their case to the Court of Appeal.

       Eurogold did not wait for the ruling.  In 1996, they cut 2500 pines and 800 olive trees and began constructing a mine surrounded with barbed wire and watchtowers.

      The villagers launched civil disobedience. On November 16, 1996, 500 of them sat on an arterial highway close to the mine, for five hours.   “We don’t want to die from cyanide,” they chanted. They set tires on fire and performed traditional dances on the road.  On December 23, 1996, thousands of people from 17 nearby villages protested Eurogold.  The men stripped to the waste, and marched half naked under heavy rain.  In January 1997, the people of Bergama held a referendum and voted against the mine.  But Eurogold declared it illegal.  In April of the same year, 5000 peasants from 17 villages occupied the mine, and forced the regional governor to close it for a month.

      On May 13, 1997, after ten years of court battles, the Court of Appeal ruled in favour of the peasants.  It said Eurogold was violating the article in the Turkish Constitution, guaranteeing all citizens’ right to life and right to protect their health and their environment.  It declared Eurogold’s licenses invalid and said the mine should be closed.  Under the Constitution, the country’s law enforcement agencies had to comply with the court decision. The peasants of Bergama danced in circles to the music of pipes and drums.  

      But the mine remained. The Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources commissioned a new environmental report from a scientific institution called TUBITAK, and obtained a report saying Eurogold had installed new safety equipment after the Appeal Court ruling, and the cyanide would no longer pose a threat to the environment.

       On July 1, 1997 the peasants got word that cyanide trucks were on their way.  They occupied the mine and burned some trucks and a social hall belonging to Eurogold.  On August 26, 1997, three busloads of people went to Istanbul with Oktay Konyar, and tied themselves to the parapets of the Bosphorus Bridge to stop the traffic.

       In February 1998, nine months after the Court of Appeal ruling, Eurogold blatantly violated the laws by using 3 tonnes of cyanide to obtain 1,5 kilograms of gold.

       Early in 1999, the people of Bergama learned that 18 tonnes of cyanide had been delivered to the mine.  Hundreds of people -- the men stripped naked to the waist -- hit the mountain roads to demand that the poison be removed from their hills.   On April 2, 1999 the cyanide was taken away from the mine and delivered to an unknown place.

       But the gendarmerie laid charges against Oktay Konyar and 80 of the peasants, accusing them of forming a secret, illegal organization.

       Eurogold seemed confident that it would have its way.  The company had tied its hopes to an imminent Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), which would introduce international arbitration to overrule national courts in disputes involving transnational investors.  But in 1999, MAI talks collapsed.  Still, the IMF pressured Turkey to accept international arbitration.  “The only way to encourage foreign investors,” they said.  On August 13, 1999, while the people of Turkey were reeling from a killer earthquake, the government rapidly changed the country’s Constitution to allow international arbitration.  Now, a foreign board sympathetic to business interests would overrule national courts. This was what Eurogold had been waiting for. 

       The company bought full-page advertisements in major Turkish newspapers, announcing “Turkey’s Golden Age,” and promising jobs.  It began to distribute job-application forms, and circulated rumours that ordinary miners would be paid upwards of $ 1.000 U.S. a month.

       The fight against Eurogold now became a fight against Neo-Liberalism.  The peasants of Bergama denounced the economic, political and social ravages of  “globalization,” and compared their struggle to that of the aboriginal peoples of Chiapas in Mexico.  They vowed to oppose international arbitration and the New World Order.

      On the morning of November 28, 1999, hundreds walked from the village of Camkoy towards the village of Ovacik, carrying pankarts reading “Eurogold gidecek, bu is bitecek.”  This job will end when Eurogold leaves our lands.  That morning, that Eurogold launched a complaint against Oktay Konyar and the gendarmerie charged the leader of the peasants with organizing an illegal demonstration.

      “We are demonstrating against the violation of Turkish laws,” said Konyar,  “I am being charged for protesting the violation of our Constitution.”

      The charges stood.  On March 30, 2001, under laws passed during the 1980ies by a military junta in Turkey, Bergama’s Court of first instance sentenced Konyar to 21 months in prison.

       In May 2001, Eurogold changed its name to Normandy Mining, and started “trial” production.  The peasants of Bergama vowed to escalate their resistance.  They blocked a highway.  When Oktay Konyar was arrested, they occupied a police station where their leader was being beaten.  They called on all opponents of neo-liberalism to join them, and to carry the struggle onto the international stage, along with the demonstrators of Seattle, Prague and Quebec City. 

      Oktay Konyar has appealed his sentence.  He considers it an imperative of citizenship to resist the plunder of Anatolia.  “The best heritage we can leave to our children,” he says, “is a peasants’ union that will provide them with a democratic infra-structure.”

       The years of struggle have taken their toll on Konyar’s health.  He carries with him a stethoscope and pills to lower blood pressure.  “It’s the stress,” he says.  But he won’t even consider slowing down.  On a rainy December afternoon, he visits the villages of Bergama, preparing to set out with forty peasants for a two-week protest walk to Ankara.

       “We, who come from hills scented with oregano,” Konyar says, “ men with drooping mustaches and women robust as the goddess Cybele.  We are standing up to be counted as citizens.  Join us.”

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