In The Name Of Energy: Anger follows after firm clears trees

ISTANBUL: A Turkish company has cut down thousands of trees to make way for a power plant in the western town of Soma, in a move that angered activists. Kolin Group -– one of Turkey’s biggest conglomerates – uprooted 6,000 olive trees to make room for a coal power plant in Soma’s Yirca village, where locals have been guarding the grove for more than 52 days.A fight erupted after security guards for the company tried to remove the protesting villagers from the olive grove, Hurriyet daily reported on Saturday. The environmentalist organisation Greenpeace denounced the tree-felling as a “legal scandal.” According to Greenpeace, the area around the small village is already polluted by the “second dirtiest coal power plant in Europe”. The plant is government-owned. Turkey has routinely been criticised for its poor environmental record.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 9^th, 2014.

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