Turkey's Gediz Delta Left Out of Protective Grant

By Jon Gorvett

ISTANBUL, Turkey, April 26, 2001 (ENS) - Turkish government officials have announced a $2 million World Bank grant to help conserve four of the country's top ecological protected areas. Yet, at the same time there are warnings of eco-catastrophe for the Gediz River Delta, one of Turkey's most important nature reserves.

The grant, made under the Bank's Global Environmental Facility (GEF), will go to four separate protected areas across Turkey. The hope is that the cash will enable environmentalists to construct a blueprint for management and conservation throughout Turkey on the basis of work in these four regions.

Yet meanwhile, a leading biologist has warned that the giant Gediz River Delta, another protected area near the Aegean city of Izmir, is being threatened with environmental disaster.

Turkey's Gediz River Delta (Photo courtesy Aydin Tufekcioglu)

"Turkey is committed to protect the bird paradise," he said, "because of the Paris, Bern and Ramsar agreements. But the nature of the area is being spoiled by construction growth, chemical waste and drought."

Siki said that an emergency monitoring committee should be formed under the chairmanship of the governor or a deputy governor of the region because the rich biological diversity of the delta is facing "disaster."

The Gediz River Delta is located north of the city of Izmir, which is one of Turkey's most rapidly expanding metropolitan areas.

But GEF project coordinator Mesut Kamiloglu views the $2 million funding as "the most important initiative in Turkey to aid biodiversity."

The four project areas include the northeastern forest region of Camili, near the Georgian-Turkish border; Igneada, a flooded forest in Turkey's European province of Thrace; Koprulu Canyon in the southern district of Antalya; and the bird sanctuary of Sultansazligi near the central Anatolian town of Kayseri.

All of these places face serious environmental threats, despite being declared protected areas.

Sultansazligi, a series of reed marshes and salt pans, is home to over 20 different species of birds and environmentalists say it should already be one of the country's best protected wildlife parks. Yet over the years, it has suffered greatly from surrounding development and pollution.

Reed cutting and attempts to drain wetlands for irrigation purposes on the surrounding steppe have had a devastating impact.

Koprulu Canyon National Park. The twisting road crisscrosses mountain streams and passes through virgin forests. (Photo courtesy Ekol Travel)

"But the Directorate comes under the Forestry Ministry. It's a central problem in Turkey, as the Ministry wants to cut timber, drain land, plant forests and do all sorts of things that are against the interests of the National Parks and the environment," Aydemir says.

In the battle between the parks and the forestry industry, the parks have repeatedly lost - even when it seems they have won.

"In Izmir, with the Gediz River Delta, environmentalists won a court case to preserve the wetlands," says Aydemir, "but it didn't make any difference. In Turkey, as you know, there isn't really any law."

Yet the DHKD is not about to give up. The environmental organization has begun an ambitious project to build local NGO networks around the country and boost awareness - both of threats to the environment and strategies for combating them.

"We have to educate people," says Aydemir. "We have to get them to recognize the dangers and then be able to act - whether by protesting with a petition or by just stopping and thinking."

The task is great. Of Turkey's 34 national parks, a recent survey demonstrated that only one has even prepared a basic conservation management plan.