Sunday’s Zaman listened to the actors close to this historic ruling last week, who all agreed that the ruling by the Afşin 1st Criminal Court of First Instance has the potential to spell major change in terms of the way corporations and the law interact on topics involving environmental impact in Turkey.The case involves one Mehmet Yağcı, a 61-year-old farmer from Kahramanmaraş’s Afşin district. Upset at poor crop yields on his 200,000-square-meter farm, two years ago he filed a criminal complaint for damages with the Afşin 1st Criminal Court of First Instance over the Afşin-Elbistan A Thermal Power Plant, asserting that it had been responsible for “loss of property value.” In the investigation into the plant, operated by the Electricity Generation Holding Company (EÜAŞ), it was determined that the plant was responsible for a 10 percent loss of property value. In accordance with this, the court ruled that EÜAŞ had to pay Yağcı TL 110,179 in compensation.
EÜAŞ appealed the decision, but on Dec. 7, 2009, the Supreme Court of Appeals upheld the Afşin court’s ruling and said the compensation must be paid. Calls and emails from Sunday’s Zaman to EÜAŞ were not returned, but Yağcı’s attorney, Mehmet Çölbeyi, explained the process that led to the decision.
“A six-person team of experts from Kahramanmaraş Sütçü İmam University was sent out to take soil samples and determined through various scientific methods that levels of uranium and other restricted materials were too high. This was connected to the power plant through wind patterns and other criteria, and a marked difference was seen between levels in soil in the power plant’s path and soil outside of this,” he said. “They determined that TL 110,179 in property loss could be proved.”
Elaborating on the importance of the case, Çölbeyi said that as the first court decision of its kind, it would establish legal precedent. “This is the first time in Turkey that it has been determined through the judicial process in a scientific and legal manner that a thermal power plant has caused pollution and that this pollution has led to a loss in property value. I think this will be an important legal example for other regions where plants like the Afşin-Elbistan A plant are poisoning the surroundings.”
Agreeing with Çölbeyi, Greenpeace Mediterranean Energy and Climate head Hilal Atıcı said in evaluation of the case that it constituted an important step in bringing industrial polluters under regulation in Turkey. Emphasizing that this was the first acknowledgment of the responsibility of thermal power plant owners in terms of the environmental damage they generate, Atıcı said: “Thermal power plants have been running freely, generating both pollution and profit. While the plant owners pocketed the profits, it has been farmers with affected fields and locals with affected health who have had to pay out of their own pockets the cost of this pollution.”
Lawyer and environmentalist Sadun Bölükbaşı also said the ruling was likely to constitute a precedent critical in the environmentalist struggle in Turkey, saying: “Those who give permission for the building of thermal power plants ignore the fact that they destroy lives and lead to serious property and monetary losses.” He expressed the hope that this would pave the way for the increase of more renewable energies and noted that the legal ramifications of the ruling might not be long in coming. “From what I understand, there are hundreds of similar court cases pending in Kahramanmaraş and other regions with thermal power plants. If this precedent is applied, then these big corporations might take a serious blow and be forced to rethink the way they interact with their environment, both nature and the people around them.”
Emphasizing the human aspect of the ruling, Atıcı also said: “The decision is very important both in terms of the environment in a general sense and very good news for the direct victims of such pollution. The fact that those same persons responsible for creating the pollution might have to be the ones who have to foot the bill for it is a major step in the protection of innocent people living in the vicinity of such plants. It will force companies to rethink the environmental safety standards to which they are building the plants, even if they are only doing this to avoid paying fines and compensation.” And the environmental damage caused by such facilities, he says, is more than many may think.
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