The road rises up the mountainside to the foot of a sun-drenched lake overlooking the valley. More than twenty residents of Uzungöl, a town in the far northeast of Turkey, are sitting there, in the cold, around a fire on which a gigantic teapot has been boiling for hours. In the assembly, we find some young and many not so young, peasants and civil servants, some bearded, others clean shaven, veiled women, others not, families with sometimes mixed origins, Greek, Armenian. or neighboring Georgia.
All are monitoring the site where, on November 4, they managed to prevent the relaunch of an old hydroelectric dam project on the Haldizen River. Together, that day, they defied the police and prevented the passage of trucks and excavators. And they didn't move anymore. Mehmet Keles, in his fifties, a young retiree who has become a tourist promoter and spokesperson for the villagers, points to the end of the road towards the Black Sea. “The valley already has six dams over 40 kilometers, that’s enough! »
Authorities have since said the company has withdrawn. “But no one believes them. Two other projects are awaiting validation here, around twenty others further away and several trials are underway.specifies Mehmet Keles. The surveillance picket remains, they will no longer deceive our vigilance. »
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