Resettlement, Rights to Development and the Ilisu Dam, Turkey, Behrooa Morvaridi

Resettlement, Rights to Development and the Ilisu Dam, Turkey, Behrooa Morvaridi

• development causes considerable disruption and losses for both the individual and the collective
• key issues: socio-economic impoverishment, human rights, citizen entitlements, relationships between them
• adverse effects: loss of livelihoods, loss of land rights and housing, loss of social networks
• disproportionately bad: women, children, ethnic minorities, the landless
• Dwivedi provides a comprehensive overview of the literature of displacement and conceptual frameworks
• the managerial approach treats displacement as an inevitable consequence of past and future development and its central focus of analysis is how to manage the inadequacies and failings of resettlement, to minimize negative impacts

 Michael Cernea, resettlement planning and risk mitigation model

• strategies that will reconstruct or protect the livelihoods of those subject to involuntary resettlement
• bureaucratic system works against local people and denies them the rights to protect their economic and social well-being
• opponents to displacement document negative outcomes in order to deconstruct displacement, to critique the development structures that support it and to highlight problems of development
• the latter critical perspective is associated with a struggle for rights to social and economic development that is inclusive and participatory and underpins much of the growing opposition to displacement typified by transnational networks, whose protests represent new sources of agency in the form of activists with environmental, ecological, feminist, and human rights based objectives
• through transnational networks, a multiplicity of actors work across state borders to draw attention to displacement or contentious development impacts and the political, legal, and institutional changes on which their resolution relies
• Examples are documented of how the interactions of transnational networks bring a distinct 'global' dimension to social protest over contentious developmental issues in a range of developing countries with varying degrees of effectiveness in terms of influencing decision-making processes to the benefit of local groups
• for post-developmenalists, these "new" social movements comprise a divergence of actors and locales, united by resistance to mainstream development discourses and projects, and to "conventional Western modes of knowing'. 
• Among the reasons cited for the emergence of anti-developmental social movements are lack of confidence in the potential for 'development' and relevant political institutions to protect spaces and their identities for local people 
• A tension exists in the anti-developmental conception of the 'post-development' new social movements in that there is in face 'heterogeneity in the form and character' of many of these movements
• Many social movements are not in fact anti-developmental, but promote access to development within an inclusive and participatory framework that views local people not simply as the beneficiaries of development, but its rightful and legitimate claimants
• Thus they challenge state and development agencies to operate within an institutional environment that creates inclusive opportunities which empower all displaced people, including the poor and the marginalized, to shape and mediate their entitlements and their social, economic, cultural, and political rights 
• The advocacy and fostering of human rights and efforts to combat poverty through access to development or the articulation of rights to development is not a new discourse, as Gaventa points out
• The notion of rights carries with it, however, an eclectic mixture of conceptual thinking and practices
• The UN Declaration of Rights and Human Rights framework, which is co-opted in the policies of major mainstream development and international development agencies, places rights to development in the context of the protection of legal, political, and civil rights
• However, the rights debate has broadened from this restrictive perspective to promote the 'multidimensional', that is understanding rights, including social, economic, environmental and "knowledge" rights
• Perceptions of rights tend to be shaped by local and indigenous practices but are increasingly influenced by global declarations
• In recent years this has been reflected in new arenas for participation that see local voices contesting human rights legislation, while local issues are raised at the global level, resulting in 'new alliances, new configurations of power and resistance at the global level'
• This supports an emerging view that 'citizenship as rights enables people to act as agents' based on an understanding of citizenship as a multi-layered concept that links various levels of agency in different spatial settings from the local to the global
• Analysis of agency has the potential to direct us to actors who are often neglected, even though they may be the intended recipients of development interventions
• Nevertheless, it is rare for this to happen and for displaced people to be considered as social agents, who, using Sen's idea of agency, can act to bring about change for the well-being and betterment of the individual and community
• Whether international development agencies appropriate the 'rights" language without changing their underlying beliefs is not, however, the subject of this article
• My intention is to establish that actualizing rights requires an understanding of both their conceptual and empirical basis and also of the restraints on their articulation that exist within and across social boundaries and in different displacement contexts (722) 
• For us, the 1980s was the decade of displacement, but the 1990s was the decade of popular resistance to displacement
• Kedung Ombo Project, Indonesia, military intervention was used to forcibly move farming households from the project area, 
• Sardar Savor project-the Indian state used force and violence against those who opposed displacement 
• Amazonian Tucuri Dam Region in Brazil
• Yangtze Dam in China
• Khong-Chi-Mun interbasin projects in Northeast Thailand
• Both the actions of states and the interests of large corporations who are involved in dam projects are increasingly subject to challenge from the forces of transnational protest 
• Both displacement per se and strategies for its management are pivotal to the protests of local and transnational lobby groups who have adopted a rights framework as a basis for claiming social justice for the displaced. 

Ilisu Dam

• In the following case study of the Ilisu dam and critique of the risk model strategy adopted for the dam's resettlement programme, this article explores the processes of the mobilization of local and transnational efforts to draw attention to contentions and, in so doing, to prevent the Ilisu dam from progressing

 Development and Exclusion in Southeast Anatolia

• The following narrative of displacement and resettlement planning associated with the Ilisu dam includes both the discourse of development planners and that of opponents to the project
• The ostensible motive of the dam's promoters is the pursuit of modernity or 'catching up' with the West through national economic growth and capital accumulation
• Planners maintain that as part of an integrated regional development programme the dams of the Southeast Anatolia Development Project (known as GAP --Guyeydogu Anadolu Projesi) will contribute to increases in per capita income and poverty reduction and will encourage political and social stability in the region, the poorest in Turkey
• The GAP is one of the Turkish government's most ambitious efforts to promote development and is considered by the government to be its greatest achievement in civil engineering
• Under the GAP project, the intention is to construct twenty-two large dams, of which one is the Ilisu dam, and nineteen hydropower plants in the Euphrates and Tigris river basin to produce electric power and irrigation for 1.7 million hectares of land
• Twelve large dams have so far been completed displacing up to 350,000 people, the majority of whom are of Kurdish origin
• The Ilisu dam project plan originates from the 1950s, but it was only in 1997 that the government, through the State Hydraulic Works (DSI), the government agency responsible for the construction of dams, invited Sulzer to build the power plant at Ilisu
• The consortium comprised Balfour Beatty (UK and USA), Impregilo (Italy), Skanska (Sweden), ABB Power Generation, Kiska and Tekfen. Each contractor approached their government's Export Credit Agency (ECA) to underwrite support for their involvement in the project against the risk of non-payment
• The narrative of this article explores some of the dynamics and contentions that caused this consortium to disband in 2001 and resulted in the Ilisu dam being put on hold
• Despite this setback, the state remains determined to build the  Ilisu Dam to supply the energy requirements needed to sustain economic growth. 
• Ilisu is the largest hydroelectric power project on the Tigris River (135 metres high or 526 metres ground elevation with 10 million capacity
• The planned location of the dam is 65 km upstream from the border with Iraq and Syria, at the village of Ilisu on the Tigris River, between Mardin and Sirnak
• The impact area of the Ilisu dam falls within five provinces: Diyarbakir, Mardin, Batman, Siirt and Sirnak
• These provinces have a total population of 3 million, of which 90 per cent are ethnically Kurdish and 10 per cent are Arabs and Turks
• Development planners and bureaucrats of DSI have not shied away from their commitment to the objectives of the dam despite its substantial potential impact on the local area and local communities
• DSI data and the Resettlement Action Plan (RAP) survey estimate that 184 villages will be affected
• Of these around 85 are supposedly empty, the people already displaced as a result of security conflicts
• The dam involves the flooding of large areas, including the historic town of Hasankeyf, and the displacement of an estimated 61,000 people
• This is likely to be an under-estimate of all local people eligible for displacement compensation because of inadequate demographic data on the 'empty' villages and is an unreliable basis for measuring the scale of resettlement
• Development planners herald the Ilisu dam as their most efficient response to an increasingly national demand for electricity in that it provides a source of 'environmentally friendly' power
• Local campaigners have asked DSI to look, not for alternatives to the project itself, but for alternatives within the project, requesting for example a reduction in the elevation of the Ilisu dam from 526 to 496 metres to reduce the impacts
• This would cut energy productivity by only a third, but would reduce displacement significantly and would save part of the Hasankeyf town from flooding --a town that represents the Kurds' 'proud history' and heritage
• Rather than oppose the principle of the dam, the concern is to save Hasankeyf
• The response of DSI engineers to this request is to explain that the equations are not simple"
• If we reduce the dam by 30 meters the energy supply will be reduced by 50 per cent from 1200 MW to 600 MW
• This would defeat the whole objective of building the dam
• We would still have a cold winter
• We have to think in terms of not a village or a district or a region but the whole nation
• It is the whole country that is going to benefit from this project
• We have many small dams, and we could build more small dams but that would not be cost effective
• This provides the best way of getting the most environmental clean energy
• To change the size of the Ilisu dam means that we would have to change the plan--this will be expensive and time consuming
• It took 20 to 30 years to plan this dam
• It will take another 20 years to plan another
• The country will benefit and there are too many villages in Turkey anyway without good access to health and a good education system
• We can help people and their children to have a better lifestyle
• We have to think about our country, not three minarets and a few caves
• Large development projects face the challenge of balancing the right of the 'nation' to development against the rights of locals not to be displaced, and 'a utilitarian calculus of numbers prevails to suggest that the development of all cannot be held to ransom by the emotional attachments to the "backwardness" of a few
• Scott suggests that such 'modernist ideology' is engrossed in a technical progress that engages in certain forms of 'hegemonic planning' which excludes the essential agency of local people and minority groups
• In Turkey development elites and planners perceive ethnic identity to be amongst the traditional obstacles to development that can be overcome through the course of 'modernization'
• No need is perceived, therefore, to integrate strategies aimed at addressing the issues pertaining to ethnic minorities and indigenous peoples into development policy
• The state 'does not see social, cultural, and political differences as an integral part of the democracy, but rather treats socio-political difference as a source of instability and a threat to national unity
• Since Ataturk founded modern Turkey in 1923, the political establishment has been at pains to consolidate Turkey as 'one nation' at the expense of diversity; this is reflected in the Turkish constitutional definition of citizenship, which in the enlightenment tradition does not acknowledge religion or ethnic minority status
• Through its overpowering 'one nation' policy, the government has imposed uniformity on the Kurish people, the majority of whom live in Southeast Anatolia, through steps such as renaming Kurdish villages with Turkish names in the 1960s and banning many Kurdish cultural institutions, including language, clothes, music and religious practices
• In reality the Kurds have limited access to economic resources and are excluded from political participation, even though they aspire for freedom as citizens
• As a result of violent conflict, as the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) fought for an independent Kurdistan through armed confrontation with the state, most of the region, including the Ilisu dam area, has been under Emergency Rule (OHAL) since 1980 and civil rights and liberties which exist elsewhere in the country are curtailed in this region
• Despite the PKK's decision in 1999 to abandon its armed conflict and terrorist activities in order to seek a political solution to the 'Kurdish question', much of the area remains under Emergency displacement as well as high numbers of asylum claims in Europe
• Ethnicity is not a specific social factor associated with relative poverty in the area, but it is a factor in terms of social and political exclusion
• In exposing the ideas embedded in the rationale of development planners, the displacement case study provides an insight into social, political and economic exclusions that underpin structural inequalities
• It suggests that unless these are tackled at a strategic macro level, articulating rights to development and developmental policy initiatives will not succeed at the project level
• This becomes clearer in the following examination of the dynamics of development-induced displacement, through analysis of the risk model strategy for its management