From: Press Agency Ozgurluk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Sat, 26 May 2001 14:20:47 +0200 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [Ozgurluk] PI: Weavers wary of the plans Turkey has for their village Philadelphia Inquirer Thursday, May 24, 2001 Weavers wary of the plans Turkey has for their village By Jeffrey Fleishman INQUIRER STAFF WRITER HASANKEYF, Turkey - South of the old Silk Road, where rains soften fields of poppies and wheat, just beyond chalky cliffs and down a path of whitewashed stone, comes the rhythmic whoosh-click-rattle of carpet looms manned by weavers with grizzled faces, quick hands and steady feet. For centuries, the ancestors of Faris Ayhan and other rug-makers here have spun dazzling kilim tapestries, selling them to passing caravans and armies across the vast Anatolian plains. But in this fertile valley, where the muddy Tigris curls toward northern Iraq and fires of nomads glow in the night, the weavers of Hasankeyf and their 3,500 neighbors may vanish in coming years. The Turkish government plans to flood this region as part of a $32 billion project to build 22 dams over the next decade to create hydroelectricity, irrigation and jobs in the country's impoverished southeast. The project is angering villagers and archaeologists, especially near Zeugma, where last summer 14 ancient Roman mosaics, other artistic treasures, and dozens of farms were buried under rising dam waters. The same fate is anticipated here. The proposed dams near Hasankeyf will force 72,000 Kurds from their homes, including a handful of families still living in the caves of their ancestors. There are indications that Turkey's widening financial crisis may delay the project, but most here believe the waters will rise, washing away meager livelihoods and 3,000 years of history. The PKK, the Kurdish guerrilla organization, has threatened attacks on contractors if the project moves forward. "We're like wounded snakes," said Hamdin Tekin, sitting on a bag of cotton as Faris Ayhan threaded his loom with spools of green and purple thread. "We don't live. We don't die. The government has told us this dam has been coming for 40 years. Our businesses left long ago. Other towns in the southeast have grown. But this dam hangs over us. We live in uncertainty and become only poorer." Over the last few decades, Hasankeyf's population has tumbled from 15,000 to 3,500. Most of the townspeople had lived in the labyrinth of caves dotting the small limestone mountain above the fields. The government, saying townspeople were spoiling the archaeological heritage of four civilizations, moved families from the caves and into a village it built along the Tigris. Ayhan didn't rate a new home. He lacked, he said, the political connections that many others had. So he lives where he was born - ie with a window on top of a cliff near a clump of thistle and clover. His family and two others are the last of Hasankeyf's cave dwellers. If the dam is constructed, they will be flooded out, too. But for now Ayhan, 61, and his young wife, Sacide, and their four children hang their laundry from the rocks and watch TV inside a cavern of flickering blue light. The family received electricity only three months ago. "I am a patient woman," said Sacide, whose marriage was arranged by her family 17 years ago. She embroiders, does the chores, cares for the children, and says goodbye each morning as Ayhan steps out of the cave, passes a few goats, slips through an arch built about 640 A.D., and heads for his loom in town. The cluster of rock he leaves behind is shadowed by the ruins of the Fortress Cephe, which in the 1200s was the capital for the Kurdish Ayyubid kings before their defeat by the Ottomans in 1416. "My ancestors lived in these caves," said Ayhan, a cap shading his hazel eyes. "If the dam comes, it load the carpets and the fish we'd catch igris into little boats and sail south to the markets of Baghdad. . . . The factories came in the 1960s. They took our business. I do only custom orders these days." As Ayhan reminisced, his feet pumped the wooden pedals of his loom. His fingers, smooth but for their callused tips, unraveled spools of colors. He reached up, slammed the wooden rake toward him. A slap and a click;ol-cotton thread woven into place. A cigarette dangling from his lips, he brushed away the sweat and found his rhythm. Ohered, watching the magic and sipping tea from cups shaped like tiny hourglasses. All the men thought it ironic that the government that forced them from their caves to protect Hasankeyf was now preparing to flood that same terrain. This led - as all conversations in this region seem to - to a discussion of the struggle of 12 million Kurds to carve out a homeland in southeast Turkey, where a cease-fire is in place after 15 years of civil war. "The government wants to flood this area for politics," said Ayhan's cousin, Arif. "If they cover us with water, more than 100 villages will be evacuated and more Kurds will be disconnected from their cultural roots." "The sons and daughters from old civilizations that left their fingerprints on these caves and plains should return and save them from the flooding," said another man. Besir Akkoyun is one of Hasenkeyf's five barbers. With 80 percent of the town unemployed, many men while the time away in Akkoyun's tiny shop. A shave and a trim costs between nothing and $1.25, depending on your income. Akkoyun, with bristles of clipped hair dusting his face and hands, said he lives in a house with 14 relatives. He wants to build his own home, but the government has banned construction. "The prospect of the dam torments us," he said. "We can't see a future. The dam is always in our mind. . . . I' too poor to even marry." By late afternoon, Akkoyun had closed his shop and Hasankeyf filled with the sounds it has known for centuries: prayer calls from the mosque, songs of peasant girls carrying silver milking pails toward herds of goats scattered across felds, and, like drummers keeping the beat to a bygone era, the whoosh-click-rattle of a few surviving carpet looms. ` -- Press Agency Ozgurluk In Support of the Revolutionary Peoples Liberation Struggle in Turkey http://www.ozgurluk.org _________________________________________________ KOMINFORM P.O. 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