Years of coal plant expansion torment Turkey’s villagers

Years of coal plant expansion torment Turkey’s villagers

SOMA, Turkey: Kneeling in the morning shade under a tree, Osman Arslan brews tea behind a coal-fired power plant that rises above his Turkish Aegean village like a beast. Having just returned from a pilgrimage to holy Makkah with his wife, the middle-aged man recalls the golden days when there was no thermal power plant in Soma. His olive trees were much healthier back then, Arslan says as smoke from the fire he lit for his tea mixes with that rising from the plant’s smokestacks. Since at least 300 people died here in Turkey’s worst mining disaster in 2014, hardly anyone supports the Soma plant.

Yet like others belching pollution across the vast country, it has used up most of the local coal and is looking to expand in search for more. This has led to protests and occasional attempts by locals to physically block the expansion. Villagers and environmental activists have been locked in clashes with the police in the southwestern Mugla province since their plant began cutting down trees and olive groves in search for more coal last month.

Human cost

An AFP tour of five Turkish coal-fired power plant villages witnessed the high human cost of relying on the outdated,