Public Eye on Davos 2001
The Human Rights Impact of the Ilisu Dam (26.01.01)
The Human Rights Impact of the Ilisu Dam, Southeast Turkey and the Current Impossibility of Proper Consultation in Turkey
Presentation by Kerim Yildiz, Executive Director, Kurdish Human Rights Project (UK)
Summary:
The proposed Ilisu dam in southeastern Turkey threatens to affect the lives and livelihoods of nearly 80,000 Kurds. An October 2000 fact finding mission to the area of the Ilisu dam organised by the Kurdish Human Rights Project determined that the guidelines proposed by the international Export Credit Agencies currently contemplating investment in the Ilisu project are not being met by the Turkish government. In this paper, the guideline covering resettlement issues including local consultation and independent monitoring is assessed alongside an evaluation of the impact on human rights posed by the Ilisu dam.
I. Introduction
Newest estimates surrounding the proposed Ilisu dam, Turkey's latest instalment in its Southeastern Anatolian Project (GAP) – a giant $32 billion hydropower and irrigation scheme which has already built a network of dams and power plants across the Kurdish regions of Southeast Turkey – reveal that the dam's construction threatens to affect the lives and livelihoods of up to 78,000 people - most of them Kurdish, poor and struggling to piece together their lives after 15 years of war in the region. While original estimates from project sponsors and companies involved in Ilisu had set this figure at 12,000-16,000, this Summer 2000 figure was calculated not by NGOs campaigning against the Ilisu project, but instead by ex-World bank expert, Dr. Ayse Kudat, who was hired by the international Export Credit Agencies (ECAs) involved in Ilisu, to supply an independent review of the Turkish government’s Resettlement Action Plan (RAP). Among the many concerns highlighted in her review of Turkey’s resettlement plan, Dr. Kudat stressed that it will take sweeping institutional reforms for Turkey to achieve "best practice" as defined by the OECD or World Bank guidelines in the Ilisu project. Dr. Kudat also censured Turkey for having already flouted many of the most important World Bank and OECD guidelines. Just a quick sample of this disdain for international standards includes: Turkey’s failure to consider alternatives to the Ilisu project (a violation of both World Bank and OECD guidelines), its approving of the project before a resettlement plan was drawn up (also a violation of both sets of guidelines), its lack of a full socio-economic plan (a violation of World Bank guidelines), lack of a resettlement budget (also a violation of both sets of guidelines), failure to create a special provision to protect the livelihoods of women (a World Bank violation) and a failure to compensate pastoralists for land loss (a violation of OECD guidelines). Kudat’s report, coupled with both the genuine threat of water wars with Iraq and Syria and the vast loss to world archaeology that Ilisu offers, makes it relatively easy to understand why even the World Bank washed it hands clean of all GAP projects back in 1984.
The Ilisu dam is to be situated on the Tigris River, sixty-five kilometres upstream from the border with Syria and Iraq. With a planned capacity of 1,200 MW, the Ilisu dam will be the largest hydro-electric project in Turkey. The project, costing an estimated $2 billion, will be built by an international consortium, led by Swiss company Sulzer Hydro and will include Balfour Beatty (UK) and Impregilo (Italy). As the World Bank has refused to be involved in Turkey’s GAP projects, the financing for Ilisu is to be arranged by the Union Bank of Switzerland, with the Export Credit Agencies of Austria, Germany, Italy, Japan, Portugal, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the USA currently considering whether to provide financial support for the project. In the summer of 2000, Skansa, the Swedish company which had a 24 percent stake in the consortium, announced its withdrawal from the project. Commenting on its withdrawal to the pro-Kurdish newspaper Ozgur Politika, company spokesman Thor Krussel cited a Skansa principle that the company not participate in projects which "are not to the benefit of society and the environment." Many feel that the company was unconvinced that the project would meet international standards.
Since 1984, an armed conflict between the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and the Turkish State has devastated the region where the Ilisu dam is to be built. The Kurdish Human Rights Project, along with most human rights organisations both within Turkey and internationally, estimates that the war has taken a toll of over three million people displaced, 30,000 people killed and more than 3,000 villages destroyed. Despite the cease-fire that began in 1999, many parts of the region remain a war zone to this day. And human rights abuses remain all too common, as any glance at the European Court of Human Rights list of judgments against Turkey clearly reveals. The European Court has found Turkey to be in violation of its obligations under international law in 90 per cent of the cases where judgment has been handed down by the Court. Human rights abuses against Kurds are widespread throughout Turkey's Southeast and include extra-judicial killings, torture, rape and disappearances in addition to gross violations of freedom of expression, freedom of association and the right to a fair trial.
Beyond sustaining these human rights abuses and ravages of a 15-year war, the Southeast continues to suffer economically. Per capita income in the Southeast is 42 per cent of the national average and barely a quarter of per capita income in Turkey's Aegean/Marmara region. Up to the present day, the Southeast has also continued to be excepted from all previous land reforms in Turkey leaving a situation where, even according to the GAP's own masterplan, 8 per cent of farming families hold well over 50 per cent of the land and are notorious for absentee landlordism, while 41 per cent own less than 5 hectacres and 38 per cent hold no land at all. Even if one takes no account of the effects of the fifteen-year war and the situation of human rights in the region, without comprehensive land reform it is inconceivable that the majority of the rural population could possibly benefit from the Ilisu dam or any other GAP project.
Over the past few years as the growing campaign against Ilisu has spread, Turkish and international NGOs have centred on four main areas of concern: the human rights costs of the dam’s construction; the cultural and archaeological desecration that will be involved, most significantly the drowning of the ancient town of Hasankeyf and the 10,000 years of history it holds; major environmental impacts that include the introduction of waterborne diseases like malaria and the destruction of fragile downstream ecosystems; and the international illegality of Turkey’s control of vital downstream water flow into Syria and Iraq which poses the genuine threat of cross-border violence in the region.
After our initial fact finding trip to the Ilisu dam region in September 1999, the Kurdish Human Rights Project undertook a follow-up mission to the area this past October alongside four fellow international NGOs from the US, UK, Italy and Germany. While the 1999 mission had provided a clear and stinging assessment of the social and environmental impacts of the dam, the October 2000 delegation was sent specifically to assess the progress being made by the Turkish government in meeting the four conditions that had been set up in December 1999 by the Export Credit Agencies of Switzerland, United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Austria, Japan, Portugal, Sweden and the USA that would have to be met by the Turkish government in order for the Ilisu project to obtain export credit support. These conditions, set up primarily in response to widespread international concern over the cultural, social and environmental impacts of Ilisu were as follows:
1. Draw up a resettlement programme which reflects internationally accepted practice and includes independent monitoring;
2. Make provision for upstream water treatment plants capable of ensuring that water quality is maintained;
3. Give an assurance that adequate downstream flows will be maintained at all times;
4. Produce a detailed plan to preserve as much of the archaeological heritage of Hasankeyf as possible.
For the purposes of this paper, I will be focusing exclusively on the first of these conditions, though I hasten to add that copies of the Mission's Preliminary Findings covering all four of the ECA conditions are available and a full report of these findings will be published early next month.
II. An Evaluation of the Implementation of the ECA's Condition One: "Draw up a resettlement programme which reflects internationally accepted practice and includes independent monitoring"
Over the course of its 8-day trip, the Ilisu Fact Finding Mission found that Turkey's attempts at consultation with the affected people in the Ilisu area have been piecemeal, partial, biased in their format and inadequate. The Mission was also deeply concerned to learn that many of the key consultations which the RAP claims should have taken place have in reality not occurred. There are doubts, too, about the adequacy of the socio-economic surveys undertaken by Turkish State Water Authority (DSI): the Mission heard from many villagers that they were asked no questions pertaining to their means of livelihood. Perhaps most importantly, the Mission ended up with the conclusion that the lack of basic freedom of expression, movement and political rights in the region makes the prospect of a just and fair resettlement currently unattainable.
a) Failure to learn from the past
It is generally acknowledged that the resettlement programme of a recent GAP project, the Ataturk dam near Urfa which affected between 150,000 and 200,000 people has fallen far short of international standards. Prior to travelling to the Ilisu area, the Mission met with villagers affected by the Ataturk project and learned that their compensation was frequently inadequate and delayed; that more than 80 per cent received no compensation whatsoever and no replacement houses; and that those few who obtained compensation have often lost that money because of rapid inflation, a lack of familiarity with city life and commercial activities.
Many villagers told the Mission they "were not resettled, but evicted". Others stated that "resettlement had resulted in major social problems, including the breakdown of social networks, clashes and disputes among neighbours over compensation, and resulting injuries and deaths". The Mission also found evidence of a dramatic increase in malaria following the filling of the dam’s reservoir and the operation of its associated irrigation canals. These reports are consistent with a recent report by the World Health Organisation documenting a rise in malaria resulting from the development of large dams in the region. Schistosomiasis has also appeared in the area. Given such concerns, the Mission was deeply concerned to hear that efforts by local journalists to publicise health and environmental concerns have been blocked by the authority and resulted in one local newspaper being closed altogether.
The Turkish authorities claim that they have learned lessons from Ataturk, a view that has also been expressed by the companies involved in the Ilisu dam. However, the Mission found that villagers resettled earlier this year as a result of the Birecik dam (another GAP project nearby Urfa) experienced the same problems as those resettled at Ataturk, at the very time that the authorities and the project proponents were reassuring the international community, including Export Credit Agencies, that everyone would be properly compensated and that there would be no repeat of the Ataturk debacle. Several cases contesting compensation have been taken to European Court of Human Rights.
The Mission met villagers at Birecik who testified that, in some cases, they had been forcibly evicted from their villages. Others told the Mission of numerous families who received no compensation whatsoever, because they did not have land rights, and who still have not been given houses despite promises that they would be rehoused. Villagers who have been moved to new resettlement sites complained that their new houses are over-crowded and had not even been finished when they moved in. One oustee told the Mission, "In the new villages, it is like death".
Of particular concern is the absence of any viable employment for those resettled. One result is that those who received compensation are rapidly running through their savings. Many see no prospect other than emigration to local connurbations, where services are already overstretched and unemployment levels are high. The Mission was particularly alarmed to learn that several of the abuses in resettlement at Birecik have occurred within the last year – a time when the Export Credit Agencies were being assured that the problems of resettlement in Turkey were in the past. As the Mission recommends, no export credits should be approved for Ilisu until there is clear, independently verified evidence that the problems of past resettlement have been satisfactorily addressed and resolved.
b) Lack of land titles
The lessons from Ataturk and Birecik are clear: those who lack title to land do not get compensated despite assurances that they will be. It is therefore of grave concern that the vast majority of people in the Ilisu reservoir area lack titles to land. In Hasankeyf, for example, the Mission confirmed Kudat’s estimates that the vast majority are landless.
Assurances from the Turkish authorities that, in the case of Ilisu, those without title will be compensated must be treated with extreme caution. Past experiences suggest that such assurances are more honoured in the breach than in the observance. In Hasankeyf, the Mission learned that residents who were moved out of the caves in the 1960s were provided with houses, but that they were not awarded title to them until three years ago - at which point they had to pay for the houses, even though they already paid for them when they first moved in. The experience at Birecik is also significant, given that the authorities failed to fulfil promises to compensate those without land.
The Mission noted with considerable concern that land registries do not even exist for some of the villages that would be affected by Ilisu. According to the Kudat report: "It is of utmost importance for DSI to provide guidance by earmarking the lands that are to fall under the reservoir for partially affected displaced communities. DSI should establish procedures to do so for the large number of displaced settlements without a land/title registration system". Following from this, the Mission determined that no export credits should be awarded until such land registration has been satisfactorily completed. This is important not only to ensure that landless families currently living in the reservoir area are properly compensated in the event of the dam being built, but also to ensure that those (possibly as many as 50,000) who have been forced to migrate from the reservoir area due to the conflict also receive just compensation.
c) Failure to properly consult
International standards require full consultation with affected communities, in addition to a full socio-economic survey. The Kudat report notes that a total of 2,100 households have been consulted, covering 45 settlements, a third of households in Hasankeyf, and "over 100" displaced households. This is out of a total of 183 settlements to be affected by the Ilisu dam. In effect, less than a third of the settlements affected have been surveyed. Others, admits Kudat, were not consulted because of the security situation in the region: "Some communities, although not displaced, were not accessible for security reasons at the time of the socio-economic surveys".
The Mission interviewed villagers in Hasankeyf who expressed concern over the consultation process. They stated that SEMOR, the consultancy firm contracted by the DSI, had interviewed 300 people of whom 80 per cent were illiterate or could not speak Turkish. The women and elderly people had to work through translators provided by SEMOR rather than family members, which many found socially awkward. The villagers were told that the decision to build the dam had been taken and they were then given options as to how they would like to be resettled: did they want a new village elsewhere? or cash to resettle by themselves?
A questionnaire in Turkish was handed out. The first question asked villagers whether or not they were in favour of the dam. Many told the Mission that they felt that they had no option but to answer in the affirmative, although opposed to a dam that would flood Hasankeyf. This was in part due to the perception that the dam was a fait accompli and, in part, due to their experience that opposition to the dam is misconstrued by the authorities as evidence of sympathy for the PKK movement.
Villagers told the Mission that they were concerned that the answers they gave to the questionnaire may have been subsequently altered. They stated that SEMOR representatives filled the forms in with pencil, but asked them to sign the form in ink. "We are worried that our answers were changed when SEMOR got back to their hotel". As the Mission was unable to see copies of the questionnaires used, it was unable to pursue this matter further. It strongly recommends that ECAs request copies of the original documents.
It was represented to the Mission by villagers that the socio-economic survey undertaken by SEMOR may not have been as rigorous as claimed in the Kudat report. Villagers interviewed in a settlement outside Hasankeyf told the Mission that SEMOR had questioned them about the yields of their harvest, the ownership of the houses, the number of animals they owned and other issues related to their socio-economic status. However, villagers interviewed in Hasankeyf were adamant that no such questions had been put to them in the questionnaires they completed.
While the Mission acknowledges that it interviewed only a small number of villagers during its visit, the consistency with which the villagers of Hasankeyf denied being asked about their socio-economic status merits investigation by ECAs.
It is clear that no efforts have been made by the authorities to consult directly with local municipal officials in Hasankeyf on the resettlement plan or other issues related to the dam. Officials interviewed told the Mission that they had not been consulted on the archaeological rescue plan for Hasankeyf. No one in Hasankeyf and Batman to whom the Mission spoke had seen a copy of the draft Resettlement Action Plan – or indeed heard from SEMOR since its one week visit to the area. The Mission also notes that village and town level officials have not met with their counterparts in areas where people are being settled from past dams. The opportunity of learning from past experience is therefore being lost.
The Mission was disturbed by the pressure that has clearly been exerted on Hasankeyf residents to express support for the dam. The Mission was told of a recent visit by a Swedish delegation to the town when banners were displayed in favour of the dam, carrying slogans such as "I love my country, I love my dam". No banners opposing the dam were permitted. The Mission also heard of the difficulties that villagers have had in organising events to express the opposition to the dam. In July, for example, the Save Hasankeyf Platform had organised a festival to celebrate Hasankeyf, but permission was denied for any petition to be circulated and for any interviews to be given to the press. Given the very serious consequences attendant on being suspected of sympathising with the PKK, the authorities’ association of opposition to Ilisu with separatism is a major deterrent to any meaningful dissent. Put bluntly, people are frightened to take a public position against the dam.
However, the Mission was told by one prominent citizen who must remain anonymous, "I am now declaring that we don’t want a dam that would flood Hasankeyf. If you see anything written or said by me to the contrary, it is because I have been put under pressure".
d) Pressures on Host Communities and a Repeated Failure to Consult
International guidelines stipulate that host communities – those which will receive the people evicted by Ilisu – must be consulted. The Kudat report claims that such consultations have taken place. However, independent sources suggest otherwise.
The Kudat report claims that "Consultations were held with governors, mayors and representatives of the government agencies responsible for RAP implementation." However, the Mission specifically asked the Mayors of Diyarbakir and Batman whether or not they or their office had been consulted. The Mission was told that no such consultation had taken place.
Both Mayors stressed the problems that the two cities were already experiencing in providing infrastructures – schools, hospitals, health care, sewage, etc. – for the existing population, which has massively swelled because of immigration due to the upheavals of the conflict and the forced eviction of many villages.
Major efforts are being made to address these issues and, in Diyarbakir, the Mayor expressed confidence that, with international funding, current infrastructure development (including 50,000 to 60,000 new houses) "would enable the city to deal with the problems of past immigration". However, an influx of new migrants from Ilisu would place a number of additional strains on infrastructure with which neither city could cope without central government funding. No request has been made by the central government to either Diyarbakir or Batman to produce a report about their funding requirements and no promises of funding have been forthcoming.
The Mayor of Batman stressed his concerns over further immigration to the city, noting that in addition to infrastructure problems, the number of people committing suicide in the city has risen threefold in the last 15 years. This problem is, in his view, directly related to the traumas of village evictions, subsequent migration and the problems the villagers have encountered in trying to settle and start a new life.
The failure to consult host communities and their elected representatives breaches World Bank guidelines on two counts. First, the guidelines require such a consultation: "The [resettlement] plan should address and mitigate resettlement’s impact on host populations. Host communities and local governments should be informed and consulted . . . Conditions in host communities should improve, or at least not deteriorate." Second, the guidelines require a detailed resettlement budget to be prepared as part of the Resettlement Action Plan: "Where large-scale population displacement is unavoidable, a detailed resettlement plan, timetable and budget are required." Without a detailed assessment of the budgetary requirements of the host communities, any budget proposed under the RAP would misrepresent the true scale of resettlement costs and overestimate the financial viability of the project. The Mission notes that assessing these budgetary requirements will require detailed and lengthy consultation and research over a period of several months. ECAs should ensure that such a budget for host communities is in place – and properly assessed –before accepting the Resettlement Plan.
The failure of the Turkish authorities to assess the budgetary needs of the host communities adds to – and reinforces – concerns already raised by the Kudat report, which noted that, as of the beginning of August, no resettlement budget had yet been prepared for the project. Kudat also suggested that a paper commitment from the Turkish authorities to make the money available cannot be trusted.
e) Relying on presumed economic growth to relieve post-project impacts
According to the World Bank, resettlement projects should ensure that those resettled are not worse off than they were before the project. The Kudat report makes it clear that there are major economic and political obstacles to fulfilling this standard. Contrary to World Bank guidelines, the draft RAP relies solely on the hope of future economic growth to protect the livelihoods of those who will be resettled.
The Mission confirmed that future economic growth in the region is ultimately contingent on the successful outcome of a peace process that will bring an end to conflict and the restoration of democratic rule. Currently the region is under Emergency Rule, severely curtailing basic freedoms. This point was made to the Mission repeatedly. The Mission also noted that commercial companies and international development agencies have also expressed concern over the security of future investment whilst the region remains under Emergency Rule.
Given the economic and political instability of the area, the Mission therefore believes that future economic growth cannot be presumed. Even if the hoped-for growth does occur, it is the view of many of those whom the Mission interviewed that growth cannot be relied upon to secure employment and services for the thousands of people who would be affected by the Ilisu dam and its accompanying downstream project at Cizre. Central government support would also be needed: such support, however, does not appear to be forthcoming.
f) Institutional failures and the need for reform
Although the Kudat report is upbeat in its assessment that some aspects of the proposed Resettlement Action Plan will meet international standards at least on paper, it highlights major institutional limitations that stand in the way of the Plan’s realistic implementation. These include a lack of institutional capacity and a lack of communication between implementing agencies. Kudat argues that overcoming these problems will require sweeping institutional restructuring and reform. The Kudat report states: "In a number of areas, additional data will have to be collected if best practice is to be achieved. Also, new institutional arrangements should be formulated and agreed upon between concerned institutions." It continues: "The GAP framework alone will not resolve all the institutional complexities of the resettlement projects. There is a need to have a more unified institutional framework, a single earmarked budget for resettlement implementation, and mechanisms for quality assurance, enforcement and monitoring and evaluation . . ."
The Kudat report points out that the ability of the DSI to implement and enforce the RAP is hampered by the security situation and by the lack of coordination with other institutions which each act independently and have separate budgets. All five provinces affected by the proposed construction of the Ilisu dam are still under Emergency Rule and, as Kudat comments, "the Ministry of Interior and the military have very different sets of priorities" from the DSI. The complexity and magnitude of how best to address the needs of previously displaced populations "goes beyond the ability of the project and the solutions require the decisions of security agencies".
In addition to supporting these views, the Mission found evidence that the laws on expropriation and compensation failed to ensure that compensation be prompt, adequate and effective – the standard required by international law. Under current procedures, the ownership of all immobile properties and resources to be expropriated should be determined by a cadestral survey. A valuation committee consisting of five permanent members, including two representatives of the affected communities, and five others should then established in each district to value the expropriated property.
Under the current resettlement policies, landowners who are dissatisfied with the evaluation have just one month to appeal. Moreover, an effective appeal requires the services of an attorney, which those in the lowest income groups are unable to afford. Typically, an appeal can take one year and involves visits to the local court, which can be time-consuming and expensive for poorer villagers. In addition, many villagers are simply unaware of their legal rights to appeal and the one-month period in which to do so. Many, as mentioned above, are illiterate and are often intimidated by the process. Some speak only Kurdish.
Even where a challenge is successful and higher compensation is agreed, it may take years before such compensation is paid. Although this will incur extra costs for the authorities, who must pay a penalty for non-payment, the country’s high inflation rate makes non-payment a cheaper option than payment. By the time villagers receive the compensation they are due, its extra value is likely to have been significantly reduced by inflation. The consequence is a system riddled with loopholes that benefit the state and which results, on average, in only one sixth of the compensation due ever being paid.
Without a proper legal framework that guarantees prompt compensation that is not conditional upon holding title to land, the Turkish government’s assurance that everyone affected by the Ilisu project will be compensated lacks credibility. In the absence of such a legal framework, ECAs should not support the project.
III. Conclusion: The Impossibility of Open Consultation and Fair Resettlement in the Current State of Turkey
KHRP's 1999 and 2000 Fact Finding Missions and other independent reports on the Ilisu project have stressed the difficulties of achieving a just resettlement programme in an area which continues to be wracked by conflicts and which remains subject to emergency laws, none of which have yet been repealed. The Kudat report too notes how security considerations have restricted outside access to villagers, thus preventing a full assessment of their population densities and the socio-economic status of villagers.
The October 2000 Mission also found more evidence of the harsh impact emergency rule continues to have in the region. These include a climate in which people are afraid to express their views; human rights groups, other NGOs and the independent press face a constant threat of closure; elected mayors from pro-Kurdish parties have been arrested or removed from their posts; and people are generally intimidated from forming any organised opposition to the project. The Mission itself was followed by state security police throughout the week that it was in the region, with a police officer sitting in on one interview uninvited.
Since the Mission's return, reports from Turkey continue to be filled with more bad news from the region: widespread torture continues, including the recent torture of elderly members of a women's peace organisation that campaigns for peace in the Iraq/Turkey border regions; the Turkish authorities, in an effort to put down country-wide prison hunger strikes have taken extreme actions over the last two months which have left many dead; children as young as 10 have been imprisoned for participating in demonstrations; members of the pro-Kurdish party HADEP and human rights lawyers and activists continue to be arrested and subject to intimidation; and as we discovered in October, Kurds who had attempted to return home to their village of Senlikkoyu under Turkey's so-called "Back to the Village" programme found themselves reliving the horrors of the war as their homes and crops were burned by state security forces in the same way they had been seven years previously during the height of the war. In light of all this, the Kurdish Human Rights Project returns to the central question it has asked since it began its work on the Ilisu Dam Campaign: Given the gross violations of human rights that continue to be a part of the Kurdish people's day-to-day life in Turkey, how can fair and open consultation with local populations and just resettlement possibly take place? It is a question the ECAs involved in Ilisu have yet to answer.
Summary:
The proposed Ilisu dam in southeastern Turkey threatens to affect the lives and livelihoods of nearly 80,000 Kurds. An October 2000 fact finding mission to the area of the Ilisu dam organised by the Kurdish Human Rights Project determined that the guidelines proposed by the international Export Credit Agencies currently contemplating investment in the Ilisu project are not being met by the Turkish government. In this paper, the guideline covering resettlement issues including local consultation and independent monitoring is assessed alongside an evaluation of the impact on human rights posed by the Ilisu dam.
I. Introduction
Newest estimates surrounding the proposed Ilisu dam, Turkey's latest instalment in its Southeastern Anatolian Project (GAP) – a giant $32 billion hydropower and irrigation scheme which has already built a network of dams and power plants across the Kurdish regions of Southeast Turkey – reveal that the dam's construction threatens to affect the lives and livelihoods of up to 78,000 people - most of them Kurdish, poor and struggling to piece together their lives after 15 years of war in the region. While original estimates from project sponsors and companies involved in Ilisu had set this figure at 12,000-16,000, this Summer 2000 figure was calculated not by NGOs campaigning against the Ilisu project, but instead by ex-World bank expert, Dr. Ayse Kudat, who was hired by the international Export Credit Agencies (ECAs) involved in Ilisu, to supply an independent review of the Turkish government’s Resettlement Action Plan (RAP). Among the many concerns highlighted in her review of Turkey’s resettlement plan, Dr. Kudat stressed that it will take sweeping institutional reforms for Turkey to achieve "best practice" as defined by the OECD or World Bank guidelines in the Ilisu project. Dr. Kudat also censured Turkey for having already flouted many of the most important World Bank and OECD guidelines. Just a quick sample of this disdain for international standards includes: Turkey’s failure to consider alternatives to the Ilisu project (a violation of both World Bank and OECD guidelines), its approving of the project before a resettlement plan was drawn up (also a violation of both sets of guidelines), its lack of a full socio-economic plan (a violation of World Bank guidelines), lack of a resettlement budget (also a violation of both sets of guidelines), failure to create a special provision to protect the livelihoods of women (a World Bank violation) and a failure to compensate pastoralists for land loss (a violation of OECD guidelines). Kudat’s report, coupled with both the genuine threat of water wars with Iraq and Syria and the vast loss to world archaeology that Ilisu offers, makes it relatively easy to understand why even the World Bank washed it hands clean of all GAP projects back in 1984.
The Ilisu dam is to be situated on the Tigris River, sixty-five kilometres upstream from the border with Syria and Iraq. With a planned capacity of 1,200 MW, the Ilisu dam will be the largest hydro-electric project in Turkey. The project, costing an estimated $2 billion, will be built by an international consortium, led by Swiss company Sulzer Hydro and will include Balfour Beatty (UK) and Impregilo (Italy). As the World Bank has refused to be involved in Turkey’s GAP projects, the financing for Ilisu is to be arranged by the Union Bank of Switzerland, with the Export Credit Agencies of Austria, Germany, Italy, Japan, Portugal, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the USA currently considering whether to provide financial support for the project. In the summer of 2000, Skansa, the Swedish company which had a 24 percent stake in the consortium, announced its withdrawal from the project. Commenting on its withdrawal to the pro-Kurdish newspaper Ozgur Politika, company spokesman Thor Krussel cited a Skansa principle that the company not participate in projects which "are not to the benefit of society and the environment." Many feel that the company was unconvinced that the project would meet international standards.
Since 1984, an armed conflict between the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and the Turkish State has devastated the region where the Ilisu dam is to be built. The Kurdish Human Rights Project, along with most human rights organisations both within Turkey and internationally, estimates that the war has taken a toll of over three million people displaced, 30,000 people killed and more than 3,000 villages destroyed. Despite the cease-fire that began in 1999, many parts of the region remain a war zone to this day. And human rights abuses remain all too common, as any glance at the European Court of Human Rights list of judgments against Turkey clearly reveals. The European Court has found Turkey to be in violation of its obligations under international law in 90 per cent of the cases where judgment has been handed down by the Court. Human rights abuses against Kurds are widespread throughout Turkey's Southeast and include extra-judicial killings, torture, rape and disappearances in addition to gross violations of freedom of expression, freedom of association and the right to a fair trial.
Beyond sustaining these human rights abuses and ravages of a 15-year war, the Southeast continues to suffer economically. Per capita income in the Southeast is 42 per cent of the national average and barely a quarter of per capita income in Turkey's Aegean/Marmara region. Up to the present day, the Southeast has also continued to be excepted from all previous land reforms in Turkey leaving a situation where, even according to the GAP's own masterplan, 8 per cent of farming families hold well over 50 per cent of the land and are notorious for absentee landlordism, while 41 per cent own less than 5 hectacres and 38 per cent hold no land at all. Even if one takes no account of the effects of the fifteen-year war and the situation of human rights in the region, without comprehensive land reform it is inconceivable that the majority of the rural population could possibly benefit from the Ilisu dam or any other GAP project.
Over the past few years as the growing campaign against Ilisu has spread, Turkish and international NGOs have centred on four main areas of concern: the human rights costs of the dam’s construction; the cultural and archaeological desecration that will be involved, most significantly the drowning of the ancient town of Hasankeyf and the 10,000 years of history it holds; major environmental impacts that include the introduction of waterborne diseases like malaria and the destruction of fragile downstream ecosystems; and the international illegality of Turkey’s control of vital downstream water flow into Syria and Iraq which poses the genuine threat of cross-border violence in the region.
After our initial fact finding trip to the Ilisu dam region in September 1999, the Kurdish Human Rights Project undertook a follow-up mission to the area this past October alongside four fellow international NGOs from the US, UK, Italy and Germany. While the 1999 mission had provided a clear and stinging assessment of the social and environmental impacts of the dam, the October 2000 delegation was sent specifically to assess the progress being made by the Turkish government in meeting the four conditions that had been set up in December 1999 by the Export Credit Agencies of Switzerland, United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Austria, Japan, Portugal, Sweden and the USA that would have to be met by the Turkish government in order for the Ilisu project to obtain export credit support. These conditions, set up primarily in response to widespread international concern over the cultural, social and environmental impacts of Ilisu were as follows:
1. Draw up a resettlement programme which reflects internationally accepted practice and includes independent monitoring;
2. Make provision for upstream water treatment plants capable of ensuring that water quality is maintained;
3. Give an assurance that adequate downstream flows will be maintained at all times;
4. Produce a detailed plan to preserve as much of the archaeological heritage of Hasankeyf as possible.
For the purposes of this paper, I will be focusing exclusively on the first of these conditions, though I hasten to add that copies of the Mission's Preliminary Findings covering all four of the ECA conditions are available and a full report of these findings will be published early next month.
II. An Evaluation of the Implementation of the ECA's Condition One: "Draw up a resettlement programme which reflects internationally accepted practice and includes independent monitoring"
Over the course of its 8-day trip, the Ilisu Fact Finding Mission found that Turkey's attempts at consultation with the affected people in the Ilisu area have been piecemeal, partial, biased in their format and inadequate. The Mission was also deeply concerned to learn that many of the key consultations which the RAP claims should have taken place have in reality not occurred. There are doubts, too, about the adequacy of the socio-economic surveys undertaken by Turkish State Water Authority (DSI): the Mission heard from many villagers that they were asked no questions pertaining to their means of livelihood. Perhaps most importantly, the Mission ended up with the conclusion that the lack of basic freedom of expression, movement and political rights in the region makes the prospect of a just and fair resettlement currently unattainable.
a) Failure to learn from the past
It is generally acknowledged that the resettlement programme of a recent GAP project, the Ataturk dam near Urfa which affected between 150,000 and 200,000 people has fallen far short of international standards. Prior to travelling to the Ilisu area, the Mission met with villagers affected by the Ataturk project and learned that their compensation was frequently inadequate and delayed; that more than 80 per cent received no compensation whatsoever and no replacement houses; and that those few who obtained compensation have often lost that money because of rapid inflation, a lack of familiarity with city life and commercial activities.
Many villagers told the Mission they "were not resettled, but evicted". Others stated that "resettlement had resulted in major social problems, including the breakdown of social networks, clashes and disputes among neighbours over compensation, and resulting injuries and deaths". The Mission also found evidence of a dramatic increase in malaria following the filling of the dam’s reservoir and the operation of its associated irrigation canals. These reports are consistent with a recent report by the World Health Organisation documenting a rise in malaria resulting from the development of large dams in the region. Schistosomiasis has also appeared in the area. Given such concerns, the Mission was deeply concerned to hear that efforts by local journalists to publicise health and environmental concerns have been blocked by the authority and resulted in one local newspaper being closed altogether.
The Turkish authorities claim that they have learned lessons from Ataturk, a view that has also been expressed by the companies involved in the Ilisu dam. However, the Mission found that villagers resettled earlier this year as a result of the Birecik dam (another GAP project nearby Urfa) experienced the same problems as those resettled at Ataturk, at the very time that the authorities and the project proponents were reassuring the international community, including Export Credit Agencies, that everyone would be properly compensated and that there would be no repeat of the Ataturk debacle. Several cases contesting compensation have been taken to European Court of Human Rights.
The Mission met villagers at Birecik who testified that, in some cases, they had been forcibly evicted from their villages. Others told the Mission of numerous families who received no compensation whatsoever, because they did not have land rights, and who still have not been given houses despite promises that they would be rehoused. Villagers who have been moved to new resettlement sites complained that their new houses are over-crowded and had not even been finished when they moved in. One oustee told the Mission, "In the new villages, it is like death".
Of particular concern is the absence of any viable employment for those resettled. One result is that those who received compensation are rapidly running through their savings. Many see no prospect other than emigration to local connurbations, where services are already overstretched and unemployment levels are high. The Mission was particularly alarmed to learn that several of the abuses in resettlement at Birecik have occurred within the last year – a time when the Export Credit Agencies were being assured that the problems of resettlement in Turkey were in the past. As the Mission recommends, no export credits should be approved for Ilisu until there is clear, independently verified evidence that the problems of past resettlement have been satisfactorily addressed and resolved.
b) Lack of land titles
The lessons from Ataturk and Birecik are clear: those who lack title to land do not get compensated despite assurances that they will be. It is therefore of grave concern that the vast majority of people in the Ilisu reservoir area lack titles to land. In Hasankeyf, for example, the Mission confirmed Kudat’s estimates that the vast majority are landless.
Assurances from the Turkish authorities that, in the case of Ilisu, those without title will be compensated must be treated with extreme caution. Past experiences suggest that such assurances are more honoured in the breach than in the observance. In Hasankeyf, the Mission learned that residents who were moved out of the caves in the 1960s were provided with houses, but that they were not awarded title to them until three years ago - at which point they had to pay for the houses, even though they already paid for them when they first moved in. The experience at Birecik is also significant, given that the authorities failed to fulfil promises to compensate those without land.
The Mission noted with considerable concern that land registries do not even exist for some of the villages that would be affected by Ilisu. According to the Kudat report: "It is of utmost importance for DSI to provide guidance by earmarking the lands that are to fall under the reservoir for partially affected displaced communities. DSI should establish procedures to do so for the large number of displaced settlements without a land/title registration system". Following from this, the Mission determined that no export credits should be awarded until such land registration has been satisfactorily completed. This is important not only to ensure that landless families currently living in the reservoir area are properly compensated in the event of the dam being built, but also to ensure that those (possibly as many as 50,000) who have been forced to migrate from the reservoir area due to the conflict also receive just compensation.
c) Failure to properly consult
International standards require full consultation with affected communities, in addition to a full socio-economic survey. The Kudat report notes that a total of 2,100 households have been consulted, covering 45 settlements, a third of households in Hasankeyf, and "over 100" displaced households. This is out of a total of 183 settlements to be affected by the Ilisu dam. In effect, less than a third of the settlements affected have been surveyed. Others, admits Kudat, were not consulted because of the security situation in the region: "Some communities, although not displaced, were not accessible for security reasons at the time of the socio-economic surveys".
The Mission interviewed villagers in Hasankeyf who expressed concern over the consultation process. They stated that SEMOR, the consultancy firm contracted by the DSI, had interviewed 300 people of whom 80 per cent were illiterate or could not speak Turkish. The women and elderly people had to work through translators provided by SEMOR rather than family members, which many found socially awkward. The villagers were told that the decision to build the dam had been taken and they were then given options as to how they would like to be resettled: did they want a new village elsewhere? or cash to resettle by themselves?
A questionnaire in Turkish was handed out. The first question asked villagers whether or not they were in favour of the dam. Many told the Mission that they felt that they had no option but to answer in the affirmative, although opposed to a dam that would flood Hasankeyf. This was in part due to the perception that the dam was a fait accompli and, in part, due to their experience that opposition to the dam is misconstrued by the authorities as evidence of sympathy for the PKK movement.
Villagers told the Mission that they were concerned that the answers they gave to the questionnaire may have been subsequently altered. They stated that SEMOR representatives filled the forms in with pencil, but asked them to sign the form in ink. "We are worried that our answers were changed when SEMOR got back to their hotel". As the Mission was unable to see copies of the questionnaires used, it was unable to pursue this matter further. It strongly recommends that ECAs request copies of the original documents.
It was represented to the Mission by villagers that the socio-economic survey undertaken by SEMOR may not have been as rigorous as claimed in the Kudat report. Villagers interviewed in a settlement outside Hasankeyf told the Mission that SEMOR had questioned them about the yields of their harvest, the ownership of the houses, the number of animals they owned and other issues related to their socio-economic status. However, villagers interviewed in Hasankeyf were adamant that no such questions had been put to them in the questionnaires they completed.
While the Mission acknowledges that it interviewed only a small number of villagers during its visit, the consistency with which the villagers of Hasankeyf denied being asked about their socio-economic status merits investigation by ECAs.
It is clear that no efforts have been made by the authorities to consult directly with local municipal officials in Hasankeyf on the resettlement plan or other issues related to the dam. Officials interviewed told the Mission that they had not been consulted on the archaeological rescue plan for Hasankeyf. No one in Hasankeyf and Batman to whom the Mission spoke had seen a copy of the draft Resettlement Action Plan – or indeed heard from SEMOR since its one week visit to the area. The Mission also notes that village and town level officials have not met with their counterparts in areas where people are being settled from past dams. The opportunity of learning from past experience is therefore being lost.
The Mission was disturbed by the pressure that has clearly been exerted on Hasankeyf residents to express support for the dam. The Mission was told of a recent visit by a Swedish delegation to the town when banners were displayed in favour of the dam, carrying slogans such as "I love my country, I love my dam". No banners opposing the dam were permitted. The Mission also heard of the difficulties that villagers have had in organising events to express the opposition to the dam. In July, for example, the Save Hasankeyf Platform had organised a festival to celebrate Hasankeyf, but permission was denied for any petition to be circulated and for any interviews to be given to the press. Given the very serious consequences attendant on being suspected of sympathising with the PKK, the authorities’ association of opposition to Ilisu with separatism is a major deterrent to any meaningful dissent. Put bluntly, people are frightened to take a public position against the dam.
However, the Mission was told by one prominent citizen who must remain anonymous, "I am now declaring that we don’t want a dam that would flood Hasankeyf. If you see anything written or said by me to the contrary, it is because I have been put under pressure".
d) Pressures on Host Communities and a Repeated Failure to Consult
International guidelines stipulate that host communities – those which will receive the people evicted by Ilisu – must be consulted. The Kudat report claims that such consultations have taken place. However, independent sources suggest otherwise.
The Kudat report claims that "Consultations were held with governors, mayors and representatives of the government agencies responsible for RAP implementation." However, the Mission specifically asked the Mayors of Diyarbakir and Batman whether or not they or their office had been consulted. The Mission was told that no such consultation had taken place.
Both Mayors stressed the problems that the two cities were already experiencing in providing infrastructures – schools, hospitals, health care, sewage, etc. – for the existing population, which has massively swelled because of immigration due to the upheavals of the conflict and the forced eviction of many villages.
Major efforts are being made to address these issues and, in Diyarbakir, the Mayor expressed confidence that, with international funding, current infrastructure development (including 50,000 to 60,000 new houses) "would enable the city to deal with the problems of past immigration". However, an influx of new migrants from Ilisu would place a number of additional strains on infrastructure with which neither city could cope without central government funding. No request has been made by the central government to either Diyarbakir or Batman to produce a report about their funding requirements and no promises of funding have been forthcoming.
The Mayor of Batman stressed his concerns over further immigration to the city, noting that in addition to infrastructure problems, the number of people committing suicide in the city has risen threefold in the last 15 years. This problem is, in his view, directly related to the traumas of village evictions, subsequent migration and the problems the villagers have encountered in trying to settle and start a new life.
The failure to consult host communities and their elected representatives breaches World Bank guidelines on two counts. First, the guidelines require such a consultation: "The [resettlement] plan should address and mitigate resettlement’s impact on host populations. Host communities and local governments should be informed and consulted . . . Conditions in host communities should improve, or at least not deteriorate." Second, the guidelines require a detailed resettlement budget to be prepared as part of the Resettlement Action Plan: "Where large-scale population displacement is unavoidable, a detailed resettlement plan, timetable and budget are required." Without a detailed assessment of the budgetary requirements of the host communities, any budget proposed under the RAP would misrepresent the true scale of resettlement costs and overestimate the financial viability of the project. The Mission notes that assessing these budgetary requirements will require detailed and lengthy consultation and research over a period of several months. ECAs should ensure that such a budget for host communities is in place – and properly assessed –before accepting the Resettlement Plan.
The failure of the Turkish authorities to assess the budgetary needs of the host communities adds to – and reinforces – concerns already raised by the Kudat report, which noted that, as of the beginning of August, no resettlement budget had yet been prepared for the project. Kudat also suggested that a paper commitment from the Turkish authorities to make the money available cannot be trusted.
e) Relying on presumed economic growth to relieve post-project impacts
According to the World Bank, resettlement projects should ensure that those resettled are not worse off than they were before the project. The Kudat report makes it clear that there are major economic and political obstacles to fulfilling this standard. Contrary to World Bank guidelines, the draft RAP relies solely on the hope of future economic growth to protect the livelihoods of those who will be resettled.
The Mission confirmed that future economic growth in the region is ultimately contingent on the successful outcome of a peace process that will bring an end to conflict and the restoration of democratic rule. Currently the region is under Emergency Rule, severely curtailing basic freedoms. This point was made to the Mission repeatedly. The Mission also noted that commercial companies and international development agencies have also expressed concern over the security of future investment whilst the region remains under Emergency Rule.
Given the economic and political instability of the area, the Mission therefore believes that future economic growth cannot be presumed. Even if the hoped-for growth does occur, it is the view of many of those whom the Mission interviewed that growth cannot be relied upon to secure employment and services for the thousands of people who would be affected by the Ilisu dam and its accompanying downstream project at Cizre. Central government support would also be needed: such support, however, does not appear to be forthcoming.
f) Institutional failures and the need for reform
Although the Kudat report is upbeat in its assessment that some aspects of the proposed Resettlement Action Plan will meet international standards at least on paper, it highlights major institutional limitations that stand in the way of the Plan’s realistic implementation. These include a lack of institutional capacity and a lack of communication between implementing agencies. Kudat argues that overcoming these problems will require sweeping institutional restructuring and reform. The Kudat report states: "In a number of areas, additional data will have to be collected if best practice is to be achieved. Also, new institutional arrangements should be formulated and agreed upon between concerned institutions." It continues: "The GAP framework alone will not resolve all the institutional complexities of the resettlement projects. There is a need to have a more unified institutional framework, a single earmarked budget for resettlement implementation, and mechanisms for quality assurance, enforcement and monitoring and evaluation . . ."
The Kudat report points out that the ability of the DSI to implement and enforce the RAP is hampered by the security situation and by the lack of coordination with other institutions which each act independently and have separate budgets. All five provinces affected by the proposed construction of the Ilisu dam are still under Emergency Rule and, as Kudat comments, "the Ministry of Interior and the military have very different sets of priorities" from the DSI. The complexity and magnitude of how best to address the needs of previously displaced populations "goes beyond the ability of the project and the solutions require the decisions of security agencies".
In addition to supporting these views, the Mission found evidence that the laws on expropriation and compensation failed to ensure that compensation be prompt, adequate and effective – the standard required by international law. Under current procedures, the ownership of all immobile properties and resources to be expropriated should be determined by a cadestral survey. A valuation committee consisting of five permanent members, including two representatives of the affected communities, and five others should then established in each district to value the expropriated property.
Under the current resettlement policies, landowners who are dissatisfied with the evaluation have just one month to appeal. Moreover, an effective appeal requires the services of an attorney, which those in the lowest income groups are unable to afford. Typically, an appeal can take one year and involves visits to the local court, which can be time-consuming and expensive for poorer villagers. In addition, many villagers are simply unaware of their legal rights to appeal and the one-month period in which to do so. Many, as mentioned above, are illiterate and are often intimidated by the process. Some speak only Kurdish.
Even where a challenge is successful and higher compensation is agreed, it may take years before such compensation is paid. Although this will incur extra costs for the authorities, who must pay a penalty for non-payment, the country’s high inflation rate makes non-payment a cheaper option than payment. By the time villagers receive the compensation they are due, its extra value is likely to have been significantly reduced by inflation. The consequence is a system riddled with loopholes that benefit the state and which results, on average, in only one sixth of the compensation due ever being paid.
Without a proper legal framework that guarantees prompt compensation that is not conditional upon holding title to land, the Turkish government’s assurance that everyone affected by the Ilisu project will be compensated lacks credibility. In the absence of such a legal framework, ECAs should not support the project.
III. Conclusion: The Impossibility of Open Consultation and Fair Resettlement in the Current State of Turkey
KHRP's 1999 and 2000 Fact Finding Missions and other independent reports on the Ilisu project have stressed the difficulties of achieving a just resettlement programme in an area which continues to be wracked by conflicts and which remains subject to emergency laws, none of which have yet been repealed. The Kudat report too notes how security considerations have restricted outside access to villagers, thus preventing a full assessment of their population densities and the socio-economic status of villagers.
The October 2000 Mission also found more evidence of the harsh impact emergency rule continues to have in the region. These include a climate in which people are afraid to express their views; human rights groups, other NGOs and the independent press face a constant threat of closure; elected mayors from pro-Kurdish parties have been arrested or removed from their posts; and people are generally intimidated from forming any organised opposition to the project. The Mission itself was followed by state security police throughout the week that it was in the region, with a police officer sitting in on one interview uninvited.
Since the Mission's return, reports from Turkey continue to be filled with more bad news from the region: widespread torture continues, including the recent torture of elderly members of a women's peace organisation that campaigns for peace in the Iraq/Turkey border regions; the Turkish authorities, in an effort to put down country-wide prison hunger strikes have taken extreme actions over the last two months which have left many dead; children as young as 10 have been imprisoned for participating in demonstrations; members of the pro-Kurdish party HADEP and human rights lawyers and activists continue to be arrested and subject to intimidation; and as we discovered in October, Kurds who had attempted to return home to their village of Senlikkoyu under Turkey's so-called "Back to the Village" programme found themselves reliving the horrors of the war as their homes and crops were burned by state security forces in the same way they had been seven years previously during the height of the war. In light of all this, the Kurdish Human Rights Project returns to the central question it has asked since it began its work on the Ilisu Dam Campaign: Given the gross violations of human rights that continue to be a part of the Kurdish people's day-to-day life in Turkey, how can fair and open consultation with local populations and just resettlement possibly take place? It is a question the ECAs involved in Ilisu have yet to answer.
