Photos: Saving a Turkish olive field from coal mines
Behind Tayyibe Demirel's olive groves in southwest Turkey lies a vast, grey expanse, stripped bare by a coal mine eating into the rolling hillside. Last month, she won a court case against the expansion of the mine towards her village, and armed with the information she uncovered from an earlier court ruling that said olive groves must be protected, she also won the appeal in the higher court. Her court victory halted plans for mine expansion, but Demirel fears her six-acre property is being surrounded.
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Tayyibe Demirel, 64, stands at the edge of her olive grove and watches the open-pit coal mine in Turgut village near Yatagan in Mugla province, Turkey, on February 25.(Umit Bektas / REUTERS)
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An aerial view of an open-pit coal mine and olive groves of Turgut village, near Yatagan, on February 25. Determined to save her land and village, Demirel has singlehandedly taken on the operators extending the mine to feed what is one of Turkey's largest power plants.(Umit Bektas / REUTERS)
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Smoke rises from Yatagan thermal power plant near Yatagan, on February 24. Campaigners told Reuters that pollution from the coal mined and burned at Yatagan, 40 km (25 miles) from some of Turkey's Mediterranean and Aegean beach resorts, has led to major health and environmental damage.(Umit Bektas / REUTERS)
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Abandoned houses and a mosque of Isikdere neighbourhood at Ikizkoy village near Milas, in Mugla province. Five villages have already disappeared as mines serving the Yatagan power station have expanded. Across the province of Mugla 5,000 hectares, the equivalent of nearly 8,000 football fields, has been lost to mining in the last four decades, campaigners told Reuters.(Umit Bektas / REUTERS)
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