Etiket agriculture

Niyazi Dalyanci The government of Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan agreed to pull back from the parliament floor the draft legislation that would grant a 44-year lease to the company that clears more than 650,000 land mines that dot the 510-kilometer, 350-meter wide swathe of land along Turkey’s border with Syria. The operation for clearing the 210 square-kilometer prime agricultural land from mines in exchange for such a long period of land lease on top of the five years estimated to complete the process, led to a debate in which relations with Israel, global land grabbing by rich nations to ensure supply of food and Turkey’s past sins committed against her non-Moslem minorities, got all mixed up thanks to the uniquely preposterous nature of current Turkish political scene. As of May 2004, Turkey became an official party to the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty that requires clearing of all land mines on its territory by the year 2014. But how did the seemingly unrelated topics such as global land grabbing for food, relations with Israel and most peculiarly issues like exchange of populations between Turkey and Greece, discriminatory practices against the non-Moslem communities in Turkey since the 19’/20s were thrown into the heated political debate? Israel entered the scene when the Turkish media reported that one of the likely companies to be awarded the mine clearance contract was Israel’s TAHAL that would enter the tender with Turkey’s Calik group where Berat Calik, the son-in-law of Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan is employed as the CEO. The reports immediately led to dissenting voices questioning the political propriety of leasing such a big swathe of land on the Syrian border to an Israeli company considering the continuing explosive situation in the Middle East. Some commentators insinuated that Erdogan had probably made promises behind the scenes […]