After the earthquake, the olive trees of Dikmece have to make way for housing

Turkish soldiers and agents patrol the olive groves in the village of Dikmece. From a hill you can see how the men in camouflage uniform move through the rolling fields. They march towards an excavator, armored police cars and two large buses.

Those buses are there to transport rebellious villagers and activists. For more than two weeks, people in this village in the Turkish earthquake zone have been protesting against the construction of new housing complexes on their farmland. They pulled with raised olive branches through the streets and became dealt with harshly by the security forces, can be seen on images on social media.

“The officers fired tear gas at us, beat us and dragged us away,” says Aysel Sabahat Olgun, 58, a retired olive farmer with gray hair and green eyes. “They beat my son in front of me and took it away.”

Her son was released the same day, but Olgun is clearly still shaken. “We have never experienced so much violence in the village,” she says. “We don’t want to do anything illegal, we just resist to protect our land.”

We have never experienced so much violence in the village

Aysel Sabahat Olgun retired olive farmer

But that land is being expropriated. Not only in Dikmece, but throughout the earthquake area, agricultural land and other private land must make way for new residential complexes that are being built on behalf of the state construction company TOKI. According to the government, the houses should provide housing for the hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the earthquakes of last February.

Far-reaching ecological consequences

The inhabitants of Dikmece understand that new houses are needed. Their protest is rather against the way in which the authorities and construction companies operate. They say that they have not been consulted, point to far-reaching ecological consequences of the felling of an estimated one hundred thousand olive trees and fear that they will no longer be able to live here in the future. As a result, construction projects for earthquake-displaced persons threaten to cause new displacement.

“The government has not consulted us,” says olive farmer Cafer Tuner. “One day some people came here to do surveys. Then we saw on e-devlet (the online government portal) that our land was no longer ours.”

Tuner (60), a bald man with a round belly and a playful smile, was born and raised in Dikmece. He walks through his fields and talks lovingly about the olive trees. “This one here was planted by my grandfather’s grandfather,” he says. “Others are even older, some as long as three hundred years. These trees are sacred to us.”

Dikmece is located high in the hills outside the historic city of Antakya. The approximately five thousand inhabitants are almost all Arabic-speaking Alevis whose ancestors have lived here for about five hundred years, according to Tuner. They grow figs, avocados and lemons for their own use, but are financially dependent on olive cultivation. “Our olives are the best in the region,” says Tuner proudly. “We use it to pay for our children’s education.”

Like Antakya, Dikmece has also been hit hard by the earthquakes. According to Tuner, almost two hundred people died, many houses were destroyed and some villagers still live in tents. “We are earthquake victims as well!” says the olive farmer. “I understand that other people need houses, but it is unfair and cruel to take 80 percent of our land. We are willing to share, but not in this way.”

Tuner and many other residents suspect that it is no coincidence that many Alevi villages have been designated for expropriation. The religious minority has a long history of persecution and distrust of the Sunni conservative government. In this village only 1.3 percent of the population voted for the governing party AKP in the recent elections. “We don’t know what the reason is, but we find it striking that fewer Sunni villages are being expropriated,” says Tuner cautiously. “Especially when you consider that the bottom of the soil they have chosen here is very soggy. I don’t think it is particularly suitable for building houses in an earthquake zone.”

Transport of building material

The lawyer for a number of villagers, Ünsal Koyutürk, confirms that more than 80 percent of the expropriated villages in this province are Alevi, but believes it is premature to assume discrimination on religious grounds. “I rather think that the Alevi villages are more often chosen because they are closer to urban areas and that makes the transport of building materials cheaper. But because the government does not communicate anything, many Alevis are afraid that the goal is to expel them.”

Although expropriation for public interest is legal in Turkey, Koyutürk, like the villagers, emphasizes that the government’s approach is authoritarian and opaque. “Normally, landowners must be informed in writing and a dialogue follows. This time everything happened by presidential decree. The president has even set aside a law for the protection of olive trees by decree to allow the expropriation.”

In addition to the olive farmers, left-wing activists are also protesting against the expropriation. They have camped in front of a house at the entrance of the village. One of them has a tattoo of Lenin on his arm. Signs hang from the windows of the house with texts such as: “The capital must rot, this land is ours!”

“These projects, of course, revolve around money,” says Umut Özsimsek, 23, a political science student from Adana and a member of the socialist party TÖP. He points to the close ties between the AKP government and the construction companies that carry out the projects. “They see the earthquake as an opportunity to earn even more. They should build more buildings in the cities that are still in ruins, but it is slower and more expensive. So they turn nature into concrete.”

Opaque

The government uses the presence of the activists to make the protests suspicious. “Many people come from outside to provoke,” Mustafa Masatli, the governor of Hatay province, said in a statement. interview with CNN Turk. The governor also claimed that “natural contact has been made” with the villagers – although he did not answer a follow-up question about how – and said that the expropriation in this case is simply faster than usual because it is an urgent procedure .

Some villagers are afraid that the arrival of the activists will make the police even harder against them. “An agent warned me that we shouldn’t go with ‘terrorists’,” says retired farmer Olgun, dazed. “But what should we do then? These people just help us to be heard.”

We are happy to share, but not in this way

Cafe Tuner olive farmer

Olgun has already tried alternative ways to get their message across. For example, she recently took the bus to Ankara with more than twenty fellow villagers to speak with several political parties. “Parliament was very nice and we were received with courtesy, but it did not lead to results,” she says. “The MP for Hatay from the AKP was friendly and said that mistakes will be corrected, but since then the excavators have continued to dig.”

Lawyer Koyutürk also fears that the construction companies will be too quick for him. He intends to take the case to the constitutional court and expects to win his case there, but that process could take a long time. “By the time the court makes a ruling, the olive trees will probably have been cut down long ago.”

If that does happen, Olgun predicts, the original inhabitants of the village will have to leave. “We no longer feel safe in our own home,” she says. “We may have survived the earthquake, but without our olive trees we cannot continue to live here.”