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The Corner House : November 17, 1999
By Nicholas Hidyard

A Human Rights Disaster in the Making - Turkey's Ilisu Dam

We were sitting in the offices of a human rights group when the secret police arrived. Shilan (not her real name) was recounting her arrest, imprisonment and torture. "I am no longer frightened of them. They can do nothing more to me", she said. Then they were in the room. No warrant was produced. We were told - firmly - that the interview could not go on unless one of the policemen was present. We got up and left. The police escorted us back to our hotel, asked us when we were leaving town and kept us under surveillance for the rest of our stay.

It had been like this from the moment the four of us - three human rights lawyers and myself - had arrived in Batman, an oil town in Turkish Kurdistan and the nearest large settlement to the proposed Ilisu dam, which Britain is considering supporting through a £200 million export credit guarantee to Balfour Beatty, the UK construction company that will lead the consortium building the dam. Since 1984, the region has been wracked by a savage armed conflict between the Turkish security forces and guerrillas, fighting for Kurdish rights.

Throughout the week we were there, we were followed wherever we went. Whenever we spoke to anyone in public, the police were at our side. Those we spoke to in private offices or the hotel were questioned. And a very visible show was made of logging everyone who visited us. "They hate the idea that they don't know what is going on", said one Kurdish friend. "They are frightened of people thinking for themselves. They want to crush any independent thought."

We were in Batman as part of a fact-finding mission organised by the Kurdish Human Rights Project (KHRP), a UK-based human rights group, to investigate the Ilisu project. Construction on the 1200 MW dam, the largest planned hydroelectric project in Turkey, is due to start next year, but as yet no plans have been drawn up, let alone agreed, for resettling the thousands of people who will be forcibly moved to make way for the dam's reservoir. No consultation has taken place with those who will be moved - a clear violation of accepted international practice in projects involving resettlement - and not even local elected officials have been given access to project documents. Many were not even aware that the project had been approved by the Turkish Government. We found no-one, however, who was in favour of the dam as currently conceived.

Balfour Beatty acknowledge the lack of consultation but argue that, if the dam was so controversial, it would have been a prominent issue in recent local elections. The suggestion is greeted with uproarous laughter by HADEP, the pro-Kurdish party that won 80 per cent of the vote in central Dyarbakir, the nearest city, and 46 per cent in outlying areas. "Balfour Beatty should understand the conditions under which we are forced to live. It is difficult for us to hold meetings. It is illegal for anyone even to unfurl our party's flag in public."

"Of course the dam is an important issue. We are opposed to it. But it is not as big an issue as the struggle for basic democratic rights. And it was this struggle that was top of the agenda at the elections." Organised opposition to the dam would in any event be difficult, if not impossible. "Public demonstrations are forbidden without permission being granted - and it wouldn't be granted. A petition would be possible but the government would take no notice of it. Of course, as an individual I can voice my concerns, but if an organised movement emerged against the dam, it would be crushed."

According to Balfour Beatty, 50 small villages and hamlets will be flooded by the dam. But a list obtained by the KHRP delegation puts the figure at 68, with an additional 57 villages whose land will be partially flooded. All in all, a minimum of 25,000 people will be affected - twice the numbers admitted by Balfour Beatty. The company argues that the higher figures are based on a 1990 census and that many have left the area in search of economic opportunities elsewhere. In fact, much of the out-migration has been under duress. The KHRP delegation discovered that at least 19 villages in the reservoir area have already been evicted at gunpoint, in many cases their houses being razed to the ground. Most have ended up in Istanbul or the shanty towns of Diyarbakir. Few, if any, have been compensated and many would like to return. Should the dam be built they will be unable to do so.

The companies in the Ilisu consortium, together with the export credit agencies considering support for the project, have proposed that resettlement be subject to independent monitoring. However, the head of Turkey's dam building programme has made it clear that he is unprepared to countenance an independent monitoring team with powers to halt the project in the event of human rights violations. "Conditions in the region" - the standard euphemism for the ongoing war - also make independent monitoring a pipedream. Out of earshot of the police, officials even told us that it would be illegal for them to challenge the dam outright. Detentions, forced evictions, the use of torture and constant police surveillance have created a climate of fear and intimidation in which it is well nigh impossible for people to voice opposition to the government without fear of retribution.

Indeed, many of those we spoke to view Ilisu as part of a wider strategy of destroying the Kurds as an ethnic group. The dam will flood Hasankeyf, an ancient citadel of great cultural significance to the Kurds. "By destroying Hasankeyf, they hope to eliminate our history. Anything that wasn't created by Turkey, they want to destroy'." More pragmatically, the dam will provide the authorities with a rationale for moving those in the reservoir area out of their villages and into planned urban areas where they can more easily be monitored and controlled. It will also cut off the escape routes of the Kurdish guerrillas to the mountains.

Although the UK Export Credits Guarantees Department has commissioned two studies into the impacts of the dam, it has refused to make them public - despite earlier promises to do so. They will not be released until Stephen Byers, Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, has decided whether or not to back the dam. He is currently studying the papers. The Foreign Office is known to be opposed to the project. Byers recently told members of Britain's Development and Environment Group, a coalition that includes Oxfam, Worldwide Fund for Nature and Friends of the Earth, that "If something is right to do, then it is right to do it." The next few weeks will reveal much about Stephen Byers' sense of right and wrong.

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